Converging Paths
by baby-kitsune9
Summary: They had failed to stop their world from ending, and were sent to another that was dying. With their power running low, and their knowledge practically nothing- could they make a difference here and save this new world? Rick/fem Aladdin/Daryl pairing. my first crossover, so be nice please and let me know what you think. Rated M for a reason.
1. Chapter 1

**Yo- this is my first crossover story ever, so please be nice.**

 **It's a magi/Walking dead story- for those of young that know a little bit about the magi series, please don't ride me about Aladdin being a girl in this. I'm doing it because of possible future pairings.**

 **But it can't make up my mind between Aladdin and Rick. Or Aladdin and Daryl.**

 **Anyways, read and review and tell me what you think.**

(****************************************************************************************************************************)

They weren't sure why it happened or how. All they knew was that one moment they were fighting against something so incredibly, innately evil- and _losing._ And the next moment, they were all enveloped in blinding white-ish blue light and some of them could vaguely hear Yunan speaking as if he were a great distance away.

And the next thing they all knew...it was as if the world itself exploded into pieces. Noone knew what to think because no one understood what had just happened.

Well none but Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ren Kouen that is.

Which was why they knew something was wrong the moment that they awoke in a different location, in what felt like a whole different world from the one that they had been prior.

They had no idea just how right they were. Nor the horrors that they would all be exposed to so soon afterwards.

The second thing that they all noticed upon awakening was that the djinn equips could no longer be sustained. Hell for the most part everyone in the group couldn't even use magoi or manipulate ruhk, with the exception of Aladdin, Yamriha, Kouen, and Sinbad of course.

Which left them in a little bit of a bind seeing as the strange new world that they had been sent to- for all intents and purposes, appeared devoid of any and all life with the exception of plants, and from the sounds of the birds- perhaps even some animals.

Which meant that the first thing that any of them needed to do was gather information on their new surroundings. The second thing that they would need to do was find a plentiful enough area with food, a ready supply of water and some sort of shelter.

That was over a year in a half ago.

Before they had learned that the world they now dwelled in was attempting to somehow purge itself of all live but plants. And none of them would lie, the first month had possibly been the most brutal on them. Mainly because they hadn't figured out how to exist in this new world and hadn't been fond of working together.

Kouen and Sinbad had been at odds with one another almost constantly which had put a strain on everyone. Both had believed that their pride as both leaders and kings of their individual groups, entitled them to do as they wished.

Kouen had paid for his folly in the blood of one of his brothers. His youngest brother's death had devastated him. It had been the first encounter with the unknown that any of them had had, and in the aftermath, Kouen's mangled body had been laid to rest on their current homestead.

After that, Kouen had told them of what had happened and agreed that once he finished, that he and Sinbad could no longer afford to go their own way. If they did so- more lives would undoubtedly be lost.

It took some real doing, but after some negotiations and such between the two- they finally came to an agreement that they could both live with and had called Aladdin into the room with them and everyone else to announce that they would both still be leaders in a way. But they would mostly be co leaders of their group.

Aladdin, however, being a magi and person of great wisdom and knowledge despite her young age, would be the actual leader of the group. They had stressed that everything that went through them, she got the final say on.

And now, two years into adapting to their strange, horrifying new home.

Aladdin had found them what appeared to be a nice sized plot of land with a building of some sort on it, surrounded by a lake, some animals, and freshly grown wild fruits and vegetables.

They had lost three more people since Kouha. Each death had been more devastating than the last, but they had learned what to do to prevent further death and harm.

Today marked the second year anniversary that they had been in this new world. And while they were proud of the things that they had achieved thus far, little did they know that things were about to change...


	2. Chapter 2

The herd came upon them all so quickly that they were forced to hide wherever they could just to escape detection. Everything would have been fine, if little Sophia hadn't have been found by one of the walkers and nearly forced from her hiding place underneath the car across from Rick and her mother.

The thing that had found her had started crawling under the car to reach her, causing the child to panic and let out a small shriek of fear, drawing even more attention to her as she quickly moved to crawl out from under the car that she had been using to hide and moved towards the railing to climb over it, when something that could only be described as a fast moving blur- appeared, startling the already frightened child so badly that she let out a shrill scream of terror.

Rick didn't know why she would make so much noise.

He knew that she was scared. Outright terrified even. But the way that she screamed nearly made Carol give their position away herself. Her fear for her daughter was already causing her to thrash about in his grasp as he tried to stop her from doing anything stupid that could get her killed.

He had every intention of going after Sophia to bring her back safe and sound, at first anyways. Now though, wandering out there himself to get her, would be the same as a death sentence.

There was a series of thuds, as a few of the walkers fell followed by someone shouting the name, 'Ali' before a whole lot of other walkers fell to the ground in pieces.

"Someone grab the girl! Don't let them get to her!" A man's voice shouted as there was a series of snaps that caused Rick to flinch slightly as his mind identified the source of the sounds.

Bones snapping and being savagely broken.

In a matter of minutes the herd thinned and then after a big sounding _Boom_ that sounded like a mini explosion there were only a few stragglers left.

A few more moments passed and the noise level died down to practically nothing. Yet Rick and several others could hear Sophia's muffled crying and hear the heavy foot falls of several males as a small foot touched the ground just within his view as someone spoke up.

"What the hell were you doing wandering away like that Ali?! You know what happens when you do! Are you trying to leave us all?"

"No. I just wanted to go for a walk," Came the simple reply from a feminine sounding person that could easily have been a young child due to the size of the feet that he could see as the same feminine voice called out softly. "Hey kid, you gonna stop crying anytime soon?"

Sophia hiccupped a few times and then said loud enough for them to hear, "I-I want my momma."

At which point Rick slowly loosened his hold on Carol and slowly removed his hand before mouthing to her to stay quiet and wait. Just wait. He wanted to make sure that whoever had saved Sophia was 'good' so that they could expose themselves to them and perhaps see if they had any information, or maybe food and water and medicine since T-dog wasn't doing so well after he had injured himself back at the CDC.

"Is your mom around here?" A masculine voice asked as someone knelt down next to the unknown girl/child and began to check over the corpses laying on the ground. No doubt looking for possible weapons or something.

Sophia hesitated to answer, earning a soft sigh of frustration from someone as the girl's voice said, "It's okay if you don't want to answer us. We get it. But at the same time we can't leave you out here alone. So how about we leave a note for your mom, with directions to our place, and she can come and get you when she's ready. Sound good?"

"Are you sure that that is a good idea?" One person asked while another said,

"You're assuming that that herd sent her mother running in fear."

"Wouldn't you run if your were possibly alone, with a kid, and outnumbered by those things?" The girl retorted.

"If I recall right, he did run- screaming like a little girl- the first time he ever came across those things." Someone else said.

"Hey! I'm barely seventeen here and those things as you all like to call them, tried to eat me! Of course I ran screaming! Any sane person would!"

"Ali's never run."

"Yeah well, Ali is a freak of nature and we all know it. After all, how many people have we met thus far that can go for a casual stroll in the woods, get surrounded on all sides by those things, and still managed to walk herself right back home without having to fight her way out. If she were anyone else- she'd be dead a zillion times over."

"You're just jealous that she can walk among them and not get attacked."

"Nu-uh."

"Guys..."

"You are too."

"Am not."

"Guys-"

"Are too-"

Are not!"

"GUYS! Shut up! Your both scaring the kid and making the rest of us incredibly uncomfortable. So just knock it off. We need to leave anyways and go back home. Those things that we found before won't do anyone any good unless we get home to use them." The girl's voice said in a peevish tone. Obviously whoever the girl was, she wasn't amused by her friends behavior.

"Right."

"Sorry Ali."

The girl made a barely audible humming sound and then picked up Sophia and said, "Hey, how about I show you some of the really neat animals that we have back home? We have all kinds. And we can get you some clean clothing and food too. Sound good?"

"B-But momma," Sophia started to say when the girl holding her smiled and said softly,

"She'll be along shortly, I'm sure. So don't worry. We'll have some food and stuff ready for her too."

"But...what about Carl and his mom and dad? And Dale and the others?" Sophia asked innocently.

"You have a group?" The girl asked curiously, earning a small nod from Sophia before then asking, "Could you tell me how many people are in your group?"

Sophia made a small sound as she thought. She wanted to be able to give an accurate number to the nice girl holding her, but she couldn't really recall the number. so instead she listed their names in hopes that the girl and her nice friends would be able to tell how many there were.

"Rick. Carl. Lori. Glen. Daryl. Shane. Dale. T-dog. Andrea. And Momma and me."

"So without you there are ten total. That's a decent sized group. I'm impressed," The girl said and she playfully kissed Sophia on the cheek before saying, "Don't worry, we have more than enough food and stuff for everyone."

"Really?"

"Sure."

"But...what if they want to stay? We've been looking for a place to stay." Sophia asked. Again that innocent way of questioning others would one day get her in a fix that she probably wouldn't be able to get out of. At least not without some heavy handed help anyways.

Ali was quiet for a moment as she thought before finally saying, "Ah. Well that would bring about a whole new slew of issues, wouldn't it. But try not to worry so much kiddo. We wouldn't turn them away. Especially with winter right around the corner."

"Really?" Sophia asked, sounding hopeful.

Ali chuckled at the puppy dog look the kid was giving her before saying enthusiastically, "Yeah. You and your group will probably be among the first we've seen around these parts in a while. So the chance to sit down and converse with others and learn more about the world isn't exactly something that we can afford to pass up. Besides, it'd be nice to be social again, right? We haven't had any new friends in a good long while."


	3. Chapter 3

Rick and the others had stayed hidden until they were sure that the small group was gone. And though Carol was upset about them taking Sophia, like Rick and Dale, she had some hope that the girl wouldn't be hurt or worse while with the strangers as Rick grabbed the note that been left behind by whoever had taken Sophia.

After what had happened at the CDC the group had sort of lost faith that there were any decent people left in the world. So the fact that there was a group with food and water and such- willing to let them stay with them, was beyond understanding right then.

Their minds kept waffling back and forth between the possibility of safety so that they wouldn't have to travel anymore. And fear that the invitation was in some way a trap, and Sophia was the bait.

Showing the note to Shane, Lori, Carol, Dale and the others Rick waited patiently until everyone had seen it before finally asking. "Did anyone get a good look at those people?"

"I did," Daryl said. "Four men, and two kids. All of them were foreigners from the looks of them. The one that they kept referring to as Ali, I think, was the lone female of the group."

"Foreigners huh? That's good, that fact may work in our favor if it comes down to a fight... Was there anything else that you noticed about them? Weapons? How they were dressed? Did they look clean? How did they take the walkers out?"

"Yeah. I noticed. Looked like some of them know martial arts. The rest had knives, daggers- stuff like that. Except the girl, I'm not entirely sure but I think she carried some sort of grenade if the explosion earlier was anything to go by. And she also carried a staff on her. And one of the other guys carried a spear. Everyone else took the walkers out with their hands. They were clean. Their clothes were newly washed. Some of their shirts were still damp."

"Anything else?" Rick asked as he mentally went over the details that Daryl gave him in his mind. Daryl nodded his head before saying simply,

"We need to be cautious..." Daryl seemed to hesitate for some reason. Almost as if he were trying to work something out in his head before finally saying, "Each of them is a very efficient killer."

"Do you think they intend to hurt Sophia?"

"Nah," Daryl said with a slight shake of his head before slowly tacking on. "If they were going to hurt her then there would be no point in saving her and clearing this area out. They cleared the area just in case others were nearby."

"I-I think so too." Dale said hesitantly as everyone looked at him expectantly, hoping that he would explain further. "I think Daryl is absolutely right about those people. I could see them out of my window. They weren't the least bit aggressive or abusive towards Sophia. They were however, _protective_ of her. If they had wanted to hurt her, why not do it here? Why drag her off promising food and water, and other things? To them, there was no need to do so. There was no one else here, and as Daryl pointed out before- they are each efficient killers. Why take a young kid that may only drag them down in the long run? What can she contribute to them and their little group?" He shot Carol an apologetic look for those last few words, knowing that they had likely upset her.

Carol merely thinned her lips at the comment about her daughter dragging a group down, but said nothing as Daryl spoke up and said, "She can offer easy sport for any guy who is interested."

Everybody cringed at the colorful words as the man growled out defensively, "What?! It's not like I'm wrong. The world being what it is now- if it were me, I'd covet any potential way to breed a new generation so that I could try to keep humankind alive. I wouldn't care much about the person's age as long as I could use them. That's just how people now think."

"That's disgusting!" Lori said, causing Daryl to get up in her face and yell.

"Well that's how things are now! Not everything is all rainbows and sunshine princess! We're in the shit out here! Little girls like Sophia, who don't know any better- who are sheltered and shit, they're easy targets!"

Rick quickly stepped between the two and laid a hand on the man's shoulder and gave him a small push to get him out of Lori's face before saying, "That's enough Daryl." He muttered, not liking the fact that the hunter was stating something like that so loudly in front of his wife, young son and Carol.

It was something that he had figured out a while back at the CDC when Jenner had nearly wiped them all out because of his selfish desire not to die alone.

Rick had known since then that the rules of the new world were less than pleasant for the survivors. But hearing someone else say it aloud...just made it more real to him. And he didn't like that.

From the looks of Daryl and Dale and Shane- they didn't fucking like it any either. But the truth was the truth and they needed to accept that, the faster that each of them learned this- the better off they would all be in the long run.

"The girl with them, did you see how old she was Dale? Did she look..."

"Abused?" Dale supplied helpfully, causing Rick to thin his lips a little bit and nod curtly as Dale said, "She looked young. Maybe a tad bit older than Carl. Possibly in her early teens. She was clean, her clothes were clean- She had on long sleeves, so that could easily hide any bruises on her arms... But all in all she looked fine to me. She was well fed, healthy, maybe a little bit tired, but not overly so."

"I agree with Dale," Daryl said quietly, drawing Ricks attention to back to him as he said. "From what little bit I could see, I noticed the same. The kid appeared to be treated well."

"Then there's a chance that they're just some decent folks that saw a little kid in trouble and decided to lend a hand. Great. Let's go and get Sophia." Shane said sarcastically, knowing that this still could be some sort of trap.

Apparently Rick and Daryl were thinking the same thing because Rick quickly began to tell them of a plan that he had to check things out while the rest of their group stayed with Dale and T-dog on the interstate and waited for someone to come back and tell them whether it was safe or not.

The plan called for Rick, Daryl and Shane to go to the address on the piece of tattered paper left behind by the stranger. One way or another, Rick promised Carol and the others, they would bring Sophia back.


	4. Chapter 4

The directions to the location of the people that had taken Sophia with them were fairly easy to follow, and after a fair bit of walking, Rick, Daryl and Shane found themselves on a decent stretch of land with tall sturdy wood and brick fences that went around the property from one acre to another and stretched out damned near into the woods on both sides.

There were distant plots of land off to the side of a large, historical three story colonial style house that held cows, goats, sheep, pigs, deer. And some smaller looking areas full of ducks, wild pheasant, and quail, chickens, and rabbits.

There was a corn field, a field full of wheat, a decent sized vegetable garden, another full of herbs and such and even some wild fruit bushes like blackberries and blue berries and even a few apple, and pear trees.

"Jesus, I dunno who these people are but they have to be more equipped to survive out here than we are." Daryl said as he took everything in before he noticed what looked like a clear fenced in field with a pond and damn near died of shock on the spot as he grabbed Rick's shoulder and pointed at the pond.

Rick looked at the tongue tied man for a moment and snickered softly at his excitement. He could already imagine what was going through the man's head.

It was probably something along the lines of, water, swimming, fishing- and that was it. In that exact order. The second they figured out who was in charge and took the measure of the people here and decided that they were safe to be close too, he had no doubt that Daryl would wander off to wade into the pond and scare the fishes a bit.

Hell, if these people cleared with Rick- he'd probably join the hunter in splashing around a bit. It'd been such a long time since any of them had seen such deep, clear waters.

Or at least some that didn't have walkers hiding at the bottom anyways.

"Think they got any catfish?" Daryl asked, looking more than a little bit wistfully at the water.

"I don't know. But if they clear and they decide to let us stay- I say that we ask them if we can do some fishing." Rick said with a wry grin as Shane caught his eye and grinned at the thought of some fried fish.

"I second that brother." Shane said, thinking of how Lori and Carl and the others would appreciate something good for once instead of stringy ass squirrels and frog's legs and canned beans.

The two had lost far too much weight in the time before Rick had found them for him to be terribly pleased. The only thing that made him feel a bit better about not being able to provide for them like he felt that he should have, was that they were both healthy and whole and alive.

Casting a quick glance around the fields, the fenced in areas with the animals- he couldn't help but think that everyone in the group would do well here. There was definitely more than enough food. Water. Shelter...

Setting down roots here, even for just the winter- would save them considerable future losses.

After all, T-dog was injured, the cut on his arm was getting infected. And Dale...Dale was a sweet old fart, but that was the main problem. He was old.

Moving around constantly, fighting constantly, not having enough food or the right kind of shelter- would inevitably kill him. And that would hurt everyone in the group.

Finally, they managed to get closer to the house. Though it was a long ass fucking walk to do so and probably used up the better part of an hour or so. But once they were clear of the fences and such and had their first real look at the house, they could see several people moving along the wrap around porch in a small group.

They were so distracted by the people at the house that they didn't notice the twelve foot hulk of thick, solid muscle dropping out of a tree that they had passed several moments ago and was stealthily following them at a decent distance back with his weapon of choice slung comfortably over one of his shoulders while he absently lifted one hands and waved it, getting the attention of several of the people at the house.

Seeing Ali get up out of her seat on the porch, and slowly stand to her full height, the giant gave the young magi an encouraging smile and watched as she and Alibaba and Sinbad and Kouen walked down the steps and started towards their three 'intruders' intent on asking them what they wanted there when the door to the house opened and Sophia came running out, and ran past the four yelling happily, "Rick, Daryl, Shane!"

 _Ah, so these three are part of the kid's group._ Hina thought in amusement as the three stopped several feet away from Ali and the others, leaving him several feet away from the threesome as the little girl practically threw herself into one of the men's arms and hugged him.

The man scooped the little girl up in his arms and hugged her back while keeping a close eye on the strangers. Daryl and Dale hadn't been lying when they had said that they were foreigners. You could tell just by looking at them that they were foreign.

Everything from the skin tone, to the facial features, to even the shape and color of their eyes was exotic and stunningly beautiful. Even the males were stunningly, masculinely beautiful.

The young girl with the three men that had come out to greet them, hung back a little bit and seemed to be studying them as they each took a turn hugging Sophia and checking her over for any possible injuries and such while Rick locked eyes with the girl and wondered how anyone could have such oddly colored eyes without the benefit of colored contacts.

And then there was her hair. Long, healthy, silky looking tresses that hung well past her waist from a high ponytail, the color was a deep black color laced with colbat blue hues to it that made it look more blue than black in certain light. She was young, about thirteen or so from the looks of her. Her clothing consisted of a purple and black long sleeved shirt with little black, blue, teal, and green butterflies on it and a pair of jeans.

Her feet were bare, oddly enough. and she didn't seem to be carrying any sort of weapon on her.

The men were all wearing t-shirts and jeans, and boots. Each one hand long hair in various hues of blonde, reddish-fuchsia, and a deep blue black similar to the girl's.

"Hello. Who are you three?" One of the men greeted them in a jovial tone. Causing the three to temporarily forget about Sophia and put their game faces on.

"My name's Rick, these are my friends, Daryl and Shane. We're part of the group that Sophia belongs to..." And that was about as far as he got before the man grinned at them and clapped his hands together happily and said,

"Oh good. We wondered when someone from your group would show up. But in our defense we expected all of you... Dinner should be ready within an hour. We're having a little bit of chicken, some steak and pork chops with mashed potato's, corn, fried tomato's and peas with some salad and bread rolls. Do you think you and your group will like that?"

"I-I... _yeah_ , yeah we would." Rick grappled with himself for a moment before saying weakly as he cast the other two a quick glance, worried that they may think him soft in the head for accepting an invite like this so suddenly without really talking to whoever was in charge here.

Neither man said so much as a word. So maybe they were just too hungry to care right then?

"Guys?"

"I'm fine with it. Maybe we can talk to whoever is in charge after?" Shane said as both he and Rick looked to Daryl who was chewing on his thumbnail for a moment as he considered the suddenness of the invite.

On one hand, it meant that he didn't have to waste any arrows hunting for the group. And on the other hand, it could still be a trap.

Still...a home cooked meal was a little bit hard to turn down for various reasons. They needed the food almost as desperately as they needed water and a safe place to set down roots. That and they needed the food for energy to better defend themselves, should the need arise.

Yeah, they should probably take the invite and see what happened afterwards.

"Not having to hunt when the animals are so scarce in these parts would be a change. So would a decent meal. Can't recall the last time we had one."

"Okay then," Rick said as he nodded his head in agreement before turning back to the four and saying, "If it's alright with you, one of us is going to hang around here with Sophia, to make sure that she doesn't get into any trouble. And the others will go collect the rest of the group."

The man that had spoken before looked a little bit more somber, but no less friendly as he nodded his head in agreement before he then turned to Sophia and said, "As I recall, you asked if you could have a bath. Do you still want one?"

Sophia chimed in a little 'yes' as the man held his hand out to her, and waited for her to squirm free of the pair of arms holding her so that she could run over to him and take his hand and let him lead her back towards the house, chattering his ear off the whole way.

His friends seemed to split off and go in different directions with the exception of the girl who hung around long enough to point at Daryl and say, "He stays. We'll wait for the rest of you before we sit down. But the girl needs to eat. She's very thin."

Rick looked at her oddly. But then so did Daryl and Shane, the two looked a little bit less than pleased to be told what to do by a kid. But for some reason, Rick seemed to understand what was going on without being told. And he would be lying if he claimed he wasn't at least a little bit shocked, stunned or surprised to know that the girl was one of the more major decision makers here.

He wasn't sure how Daryl and Shane would take to getting ordered around by a little girl, but he was fairly certain that their masculine pride would cause them to get their asses kicked. Possibly off of the property if they didn't watch themselves.

Especially since they didn't know what these people would and wouldn't take from them. Behavior wise anyways.

"Alright, Daryl will stay and Shane and I will go and collect the rest of our group-" Rick said when he was cut off by the girl when she said,

"Take Hina with you. He'll watch your backs for you." And lifted a hand to indicate to something behind them. The three men stiffened ever so slightly and slowly turned to see what, or who, she was pointing at. And all three instantly jumped and let out various oaths upon finding themselves face to face with a giant with short sky blue hair and glacier blue eyes staring down at them form his tall height.


	5. Chapter 5

The moment that the three were done shitting themselves at the sight of Hina's twelve foot some inches of thick, heavily chorded muscle- the two that had decided to go back for the others slowly meandered off after the giant. Perhaps because he was laughing at them and their reactions to him had embarrassed them or maybe it was more because they didn't trust him to walk behind them with that large fucking trident like spear of his without accidentally poking one of them in the ass.

Whatever the reason was, it took them a little while to finally disappear. And even when they did, Hina's rumbling laughter could be heard in the woods long, long after.

Leaving Daryl alone with the girl. His blue-green eyes studying her features as she slowly shook her head at Hina's predatory antics and the never ending stream of entertainment he seemed to get from employing them.

She just hoped that those two guys didn't get so nervous around him that they shot him in the ass or something.

The Imuchakk warrior just might do something terrible to them, like he had with Sinbad the first time the man had held a fire arm and dropped it.

The weapon had discharged upon hitting the ground and the bullet had torn open the flesh of Hina's upper thigh. And though it had been nothing but a flesh wound, the man had promptly turned and punched the hell out of his king. And then for at least a week after Sinbad had finally healed from his concussed state, he'd bitched at the man endlessly about injuring him.

In Aladdin's opinion, Sinbad had been lucky to get off with a mere concussion from the giant. If it had been her- she would have laid in bed, made herself look as pitiful as possible when Sinbad had come to see her. And made the man swear an oath to be her slave forever.

But that was just her opinion.

Her funny, _vindictive_ little opinion... Was it weird now that she sort of wanted someone to shoot her? Not lethally, mind you. Everyone would flip out and make some very enthusiastic attempts to raise her from the dead for the specific purpose of killing her again themselves. But manage to wing her and give her a nice scar or something...

She mentally shook herself out of morbid thoughts to find the man that had been left behind by the others- what was his name again? Feral? Meral? No wait- it started with a D didn't it? What was it again? She wondered as she caught the man eyeing her strangely, his hands gripping his crossbow so tightly that his knuckles were starting to turn white, _ah fuck it!_ She thought in mild frustration. She'd call him Hunter until she learned his name properly.

Anyways, she caught Hunter eyeing her strangely and slowly moving around so that he was circling her like some sort of wild animal seeking out it's prey.

She didn't exactly feel uncomfortable under the gaze of those unblinking eyes. In fact she was used to predators of all sorts. Alibaba, Morgiana, Hina, Sharrkan, Masrur, Ja-far, Sinbad- the list was damned near endless, so she was used to being appraised by a predator of one sort or another. Still, his behavior wouldn't go over well with the others.

Especially Sinbad, Ja-far, Hinahoho, Alibaba, and Morg.

She wasn't exactly sure why, but thought that perhaps their protectiveness must be partially due to their new location, how defenseless she appeared to be even here- though she was fully capable of fighting, and did so very well thanks to all her training with the other predators in her life- or it could have possibly had something to do with how they had found her a year ago after she had wandered away to go on a walk like she usually did, and wound up being kidnapped by a bunch of crazed men.

She wasn't going to lie, they had hurt her in ways that she had never imagined possible to hurt a human being. And when the others had come looking for her, they'd found her.

She recalled what happened so vividly that it almost made her cringe and feel the nearly overwhelming urge to vomit. She had been bound, her boy covered in so many bruises and discolorations that she had been in absolute agony whenever she had tried to move for a month afterwards.

They had used her body. One after another until she had lost count of how many times she had been taken. She had lost consciousness several times hoping to escape from the pain of the violations, but they hadn't allowed it. Every time she passed out cold, they would shock her awake violently.

Usually by breaking something, electercution, or some other horrible method.

Sinbad, Alibaba, Kouen, and Masrur had been the ones to find her. But they hadn't been able to retrieve her right then. They couldn't chance being spotted due to the number of men that had her, she understood that, truly she did. But she would never understand why they hid themselves and listened and watched what was done to her even if they mourned the loss of her innocence.

Once night had fallen, and the men had all but exhausted themselves with her and wandered off to sleep, they had struck. Taking out a group of at least forty with minimum effort while Masrur had carefully removed her from the scene and handed her off to Alibaba who had stayed back on Sinbad's command.

The second that her friend had her, he had hugged her as tightly as he dared while Masrur had handed him something to wrap her naked form in and then left them both. Unnerved by her silence and blank stare, and Alibaba's tears.

It had taken her two in a half months to be able to move again completely without much pain or effort. During which time she spent a majority of her time in her room, being kept company by Morgiana, Yam and the other two women, with the exception of Ja-far, Hinahoho, and Alibaba.

It took at least two more months after she was able to get up and move around freely again for Sinbad and Kouen to face her. Not because they pitied her or anything, they knew that she didn't want them to pity her. Nor did they feel disgusted at the sight of her as she had previously wondered about.

No- they had been disgusted with themselves for failing her so badly and didn't know what to say or do to make things better.

The entire incident was the reason behind her request for each of the warriors to teach her how to fight. And she was a very quick learner. It had only taken each of them several weeks to a month or so to teach her everything that they each knew about fighting.

But even now, after the incident, Aladdin stayed true to herself as a magi and remained for the most part- an absolute pacifist. Which was why she knew that the others wouldn't like Hunter-boy's current behavior.

If any of them caught any of him or his group eyeing her with so much as a hint of lust, they'd rip their eyes out of their heads and then string them up and skin them alive like they had the men that had violated her.

"Come on, I guess I should show you around." She said as she caught sight of Ja-far and Sharrkan stepping out of the house and pausing as something akin to murderous rage flitted across their handsome faces when they caught sight of her and Hunter standing alone, unsupervised...

 _Ah crap. This could be problematic_. Aladdin thought as she absently reached out and halted Hunter's circling at the same exact moment her two friends jumped the porch railing and began making their way over to them.

"Ali, is there some kind of problem with our new friend?" Sharrkan asked as he and Ja-far finally reached them. The three men took a moment to size each other up silently as Ja-far reached out and slowly pulled her away from Hunter's side. Just in case Sharrkan lost his temper and decided to punch the bastard for sizing her up like a piece of meat.

"No. Everything's fine." Aladdin said gently, her voice lulling them into believing her. The two visibly relaxed for a second before Ja-far asked quietly, yet still loudly enough to be overheard by Hunter.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. He's just..."

"Curious?" Ja-far supplied helpfully. The girl nodded her head slowly and he gave her a little stressed looking smile and then patted her on the head before looking back at Hunter and saying threateningly, "Okay. I'll buy it for now. But if you so much as _breathe_ on Ali wrong...you won't live long enough to regret it. Ali, we'll be back up at the house for now. But I'll send someone to find you in a few minutes so don't wander off too far, ya hear."

The girl hesitated for a moment, but then nodded her head and gave the man a small wave as he turned and slowly started walking away, leaving Sharrkan there for a few moments longer, eyeing the stranger with little veiled anger before he shifted his golden amber gaze to her and he quickly leaned down and pressed his mouth against her cheek and muttered that he had better see her at dinner or else and then turned and walked away.


	6. Chapter 6

Not long after Daryl had been threatened by the two blonds, someone came out of the house again and gently grasped the girl's wrist and then slowly led her away from him and back to what he assumed, they believed, was safety. Psh. If any of them bothered to get to know him any, they would know that if he really wanted at the girl- there wasn't anything short of killing him that would stop him.

He could sneak into the house. Hell he could even steal her from her bed at night if he was of a mind to.

He was silent, quick, sure footed- and he could carry her dead weight easily and move a great distance before his endurance finally gave out.

But then again, that was only _if_ he really wanted at her.

So all he could really say as he sat himself down some odd feet away from the house, underneath a tree, was that it was a _fucking good_ thing that he wasn't into little girls. Though he didn't doubt in the least that in the next few months or more, he'd find himself interested in her.

It'd been a long time since he'd had himself a woman. And she was a right pretty little thing so it was easy for him to see _why_ her friends tended to worry about her being alone with strange men.

Absently reaching into one of his pockets for his cigarettes, he started to pull one out and put it to his lips as he thought to himself. Yes sir. If he were the wrong sort of fella, he would have had her in the woods somewhere, pinned underneath him and screaming.

Feeling his stomach knot painfully at the disturbing thought, he sighed softly and then took the smoke from his mouth and shoved it back in it's packet and re pocketed them and then resigned himself to waiting for Rick and the others. In the meantime, he simply sat there and observed the interactions of the strangers whenever he saw them.

For the most part, the group was comprised of a few adults and the rest were teens. The youngest of which was Ali. There were also more girls there too, all of them were hands down drop dead gorgeous however none of them caught his fancy like Ali had.

Not only that but each one of them with the exception of Ali, seemed to be in a relationship of some kind with one or more of the men around here.

And while that wasn't exactly strange with the world as it was now, he couldn't help but wonder how Rick and the others would react. He doubted that the women would take kindly to such things. They tended to have a little bit better morals when it came to relationships.

Well...mostly anyways. There was always an exception to the rule.

Like there was with Lori.

True the woman had thought that her husband was dead and gone, and she'd at that time had a right to sleep with whoever she wanted, but he couldn't help but wonder about the suddenness of hers and Shane's 'relationship'. True, since Rick had come back, they had ended things and decided to stay friends. but Rick didn't know about his wife and friend.

Daryl couldn't help but wonder if the man was just a little bit stupid or blind when it came to those close to him. Possibly more than a little bit of both, he thought to himself when he heard the RV, Rick's and Glen's car's. Making a small sound in the back of his throat as everyone pulled up to the house as much as they dared, and then shut off their vehicles- he waited for them all to climb out before realizing that the giant that had gone with Rick and Shane was oddly MIA at that moment.

"Daryl, how is it going?" Glen asked almost warily as he eyed the house. Or more specifically the people that slowly began to step out of the door, single file.

"Could be better, could be worse." The hunter said as he slowly got up off of the ground and brushed himself off as Sophia came out of the house with one of the other people and practically made all of their ears bleed when she saw her momma.

Everyone stood silently as the little girl hugged her mom and got her little face showered in kisses. And once Carol was done greeting her daughter and checking her over, Carl ran over and the two practically ran circles around each other before taking off around the house, laughing and squealing the whole way.

Leaving the two groups alone together as everyone seemed to size everyone else up for a few moments before one of the men turned and suggested, "Ladies, why don't all of you go inside and finish up with dinner while we get to know a little bit about our new friends."

The women nodded and began to go back inside with the exception of the girl, Ali whom merely stood there between the bodies of the two men that had greeted them upon their arrival earlier- the red head and the dark haired man- with her hands stuffed in her pant pocket's and her eyes studying the lot of them.

"We never gave our names before," Sinbad started before deciding to continue, "A grievous oversight on our part. So let us fix that now. My name is Sin, the girl next to me is Ali, on the other side of her is Ren, and his brother Komui. The blond teen is Alex, next to him are my friends Jareth, Sharrkan, Masrur- You already met Hina...speaking of, where is he? Wasn't he with you?"

Rick nodded his head and quickly replied, "Once we reached our people he kind of split off from us. We thought that he'd come back on his own."

"Makes sense." Sin said before asking him to introduce everyone.

"You've already met Daryl and Shane, so let's start with...Lori, my wife. And Carl, my son, is the little boy that ran off with Sophia. The woman with the short greying hair is Carol, Sophia's mother. The Asian looking guy is Glen-"

"I'm Korean." Glen corrected as he sent a small glare towards Rick.

"The blond woman is Andrea, and with her is Dale and T-dog. And...I-I think that's everyone."

"Good. We haven't introduced everyone in our group quite yet, but you will meet everyone eventually. Dinner should be ready if all of you would like to come in out of the heat."

"That's very kind of you but we need to speak to whoever is in charge about maybe staying for a spell." Rick said awkwardly.

"Ah well, go ahead and speak. Ali will listen."

"Ali?" Rick said as his eyes automatically went to the girl. "S-She's the leader of your group?"

"Yes."

Rick looked like he wanted to say or ask something, but one of the others beat him to it as said in an outraged tone, "But she's a kid. How could you take orders from her?"

"Because this kid has kept all of us alive for the past two years, single handedly. She's sacrificed things that no one should sacrifice, and she's lost more than you could imagine. We respect her strength and courage. If you want to stay, you will at least have to listen to her when she says to do, or in many cases, _not_ do something. Unless you are dangerously close to overstepping, for the most part she will let one of your own take care of you. But if she feels that you are becoming a threat to us, and to your own- we will force you to leave. Now if your done complaining about our leader- come inside and eat something. You're all too thin."


	7. Chapter 7

Rick and the others weren't sure what to think about the foreigners. To be perfectly honest, they weren't all that sure what to think of the fact that they allowed a mere teen to lead them. I mean, most grown men and women would have sat the girl down and laid down the law and told her that she had _no_ place leading them.

After all, what could she possibly contribute to the group as a leader that one of the other's couldn't? And yet...this particular group seemed not to mind that the girl, _the kid_ , Ali was their leader.

They didn't care that she was merely a young girl. Nor about her gender- which was also peculiar. Or at least Rick and several of the others thought so if one sat down to consider what Daryl had said before about females being coveted.

And yet as much as the foreigners seemed to take much into consideration when it came to the girl, he also couldn't help but notice how protective they were of her.

They treated her like she was fragile. _Almost like she were made of spun glass_. He noted as they all piled into the house to eat. As Sin had pointed out before, they were each much too thin from the time that they had spent out in the world.

The moment that each of them stepped into the large mansion-like home, they were hit by the smell of freshly baked bread, fried chicken, cooked corn, and other scents, causing each one of their stomach's to growl and ache painfully.

Aside from that though, they noticed how roomy and cozy the place was. Every piece of furniture, and such was exactly so. From the small tables just inside the door, to the coat wrack where several scarves and jackets hung- to the peek they got of the spacious living room and beyond.

All in all it was quite impressive and wonderfully arranged for maximum comfort without sacrificing more room than absolutely necessary considering the size of their group.

"I hope that all of you are hungry, we usually tend to make enough to have left over for several days- just in case we come across anyone that needs an pretty excessive amount of food to eat." Sin said as he grasped Ali's slender shoulders and pulled her back against his chest and held her there out of the way so that Rick and the others could file inside of the house.

"Uh, y-yeah. We are kind of hungry. I actually don't recall the last time any of us ate."

"It's been almost a week since we left the mountains and went to the CDC." Dale supplied absently as he looked around the house a little bit out of curiosity.

"The CDC?" Sin muttered with a small frown, earning a funny look from several people in Ricks group as Glen said,

"The center of disease control. We went there hoping that they may have found a cure or something to help combat whatever it is raising the dead- but the guy that ran the place..." He stopped speaking, not really wanting to talk about what had happened.

"He died..." It was Ali that spoke, startling Glen and the others somewhat as she reached up and gently tapped the backs of Sin's hands to get him to let her go. He did so automatically knowing that if he didn't someone in their group would take note of her discomfort and possible distress and punch the hell out of him.

And he knew that _that_ would be a little bit awkward to explain to the possible newbies. Especially since they didn't know much of anything about them and how they functioned.

If they saw someone hit him because Ali was uncomfortable, both groups would probably fall into chaos. And Sin knew that that was bad for all of them.

No one knew how to respond to Ali's observation, so no one said anything at all with the exception of Dale who moved in close to the girl and leaned down and smiled at her.

Sinbad watched the man for a moment as Ali took his measure, and was relieved to see her white ruhk wrap itself around him, coaxing out his own so that he could see it too.

His ruhk was a pale blue green color. The colors representing healing and wisdom.

He would be most welcome in the group aside from the children and the...Asian? No wait, he had said that he was Korean, hadn't he? Ali went ahead and coaxed the ruhk of the others out while she was standing there. Allowing them both to see what kind of people they were opening their home too.

Rick's ruhk was the same color as Alibaba's white-yellow with a small hint of Ali's own colors, blue, green and soft pink in it.

He was so hopeful despite the state of the world he lived in now. He also had a lot of inner strength, compassion, love, and kindness in him. But aside form those, he was an excellent leader and a fairly decent strategist.

He would be welcome here too.

Everyone else had various colors to their ruhk. The hunter, for instance, didn't hold out much hope for himself, or anyone else much less the world they lived in. His ruhk was slightly darker than everyone else's, but that was to be expected for someone like him.

Aside from that, they could tell that he cared about his group and everyone in it and would defend them to the death if need be. He wasn't afraid of death, nor what lay beyond it. He was a decent strategist in his own right, and would make a good friend and comrade in arms.

The Korean had inner strength, and cunning coming out of his ears. On top of that he was a decent, if stubborn fighter. Not a terrible strategist, and all around happy-go-lucky guy.

Ali and he would be the best of friends in no time flat. Sin mused as he let his gaze move on to the women and the last male of the group.

The man, Shane, had a decent head on his shoulder- however he was very quick tempered which tended to work against him. Aside from that his ruhk was a little bit darker than the hunter's was. He posed no threat at the moment, which was fine, but he would bear watching from now on.

Especially since his ruhk clued Sin in on what he thought of Ali being the leader of their group.

One of the women had grey-ish blue ruhk, meaning that she had suffered great losses and had likely been abused at some point in life. She may need a friendly shoulder to cry on sooner or later, he absently noted.

The other women and male checked out as fine. Though the women were discontent with the way that things were. One thing that struck him as peculiar was that the woman with the long dark hair, standing close to Rick- there was another source of ruhk inside of her body, indicating new life was forming.

He quickly glanced down at Ali who caught his eye and simply nodded her head in silent confirmation. Causing Sin to grin down at her as everyone shuffled past them and into the dinning room where the food was already laid out on the impressive long mahogany table with sixteen chairs.

There was another table on the opposite side of the room with food laid out on it as well.

Thankfully, due to the second table, they now had enough room for everyone to sit and eat. Which was good since now his idea of having two tables, just in case they found more survivors, could be put to practical use and no one could bitch at him about it anymore.

"Alright everyone, please grab a seat and help yourselves while someone goes to call in the kids." Sinbad said to Rick and his group before looking down at Ali again and saying, "You should try to eat something too since you've been skipping meals again recently. And don't think that someone won't notice if you don't bother either- You'll sit down and eat something or I'll sic Hina, Alex and Morgiana on you. And we all know how that will turn out, now don't we."

The girl thinned her lips in displeasure for a moment at the semi threat, yet didn't put up much of a fight. Instead she merely glared at him for several moments and then turned and walked over to one of the tables and grabbed the chair at the end of it and seated herself in it and slowly began to fix herself a plate as Sin turned to Rick and said in a low tone, "Could you please monitor how much she eats for me until I get back? Everyone worries that she may be getting ill again whenever she doesn't eat."

Rick looked at him funny and then looked back at the girl that was the proclaimed leader of the group and slowly nodded his head yes as he asked in a hushed tone, "Does she get ill easily?" He asked the question both out of curiosity and concern for the girl. Yet he didn't really expect a response of any kind.

So he was more than a little bit startled when the man said, "No. She usually doesn't get ill at all. But...there was an incident...and she hasn't been completely the same since." It was all the man really had a chance to say before someone from his group, a younger man in his early twenties with platinum blond shoulder length hair and vivid green eyes, slapped him in the back of the head hard enough to almost knock him off of his feet.

Earning a _loud_ , pained yelp from Sin as he turned to face the younger man who practically snarled at him to shut the hell up. He was causing the girl pain. Maybe not physical pain, but Rick and Dale and several of the others slowly started to understand why everyone was so worried about the girl.

Something had happened to her. _Something bad_. And she was in the process of healing from it.

Which begged the question of, what could have hurt her so much? As a former cop, Rick had seen a little bit of everything pertaining to the brutality of mankind before the world had gone to shit. And since waking up alone in the hospital, and going out into the world as it was now to find Lori and Carl, he had come across some very, very disturbing things.

So very little surprised him anymore.

But somehow Rick got the feeling that once he figured out what had happened to the kid, he'd be more shocked than he had been in a good long time. And _that_ was really saying something.


	8. Chapter 8

**What the fuck?**

 **For anyone that doesn't know why I'm writing this, go to review 3 of Converging Paths, and read it. I don't know what this person was trying to say- but leaving me messages like that is (I'm sorry to those of you who are Christians out there) _unacceptable_. **

**Now, I'm not trying to offend, but I am a heathen pure and simple and damned proud of my godlessness. So leaving me weird messages like that- attached to one of my stories, is beyond insulting. (If I wanted to listen to a sermon, I'd talk to the loons in my family that think that god wants me dead.)**

 **If you have something to say, PM me personally and leave my writing alone. If you want to preach to me- do it outside of my work, _not_ in it. **

**(Either way it doesn't really matter if you preach at me anyways- I'll still ignore you.)**

* * *

Dinner for the most part was...nice. Rick did as Sin had requested and off and on would slyly sneak food onto Ali's plate to make sure that she ate enough. And his son, upon seeing his dad do this, decided to help out, though he was caught easily enough by Ali due to his clumsiness.

The hunter- Daryl also contributed a few things.

Three spoonful's of cut up, strawberries, blueberries, pears and tangerines and a few slices of a cut up pork chop. Fortunately, or more to the point, unfortunately- depending on who one asked- Ali didn't catch him as she had the boy, and by the time the meal was over with her stomach was protesting the amount of food that she had eaten, causing her to look a little bit green where she sat holding her middle while everyone sat talking.

"So, um...if you don't mind my asking- Why would you appoint a teenager as your leader?" Andrea finally asked curiously as everyone talking suddenly fell silent as she carefully tacked on, "I mean, no offense or anything to Ali- I'm sure that is a great kid and all, but why your leader? What did she do to earn such respect from all of you? She's very quiet, and has barely said more than two words since we got here for any reason. I can't imagine that she has any combat experience or-"

"I'm going to stop you right there." The red headed man known as Ren said as he set his cup of tea aside and said, "Every one of us is from different nations that have long since died out. Ali- was the princess of a nomadic tribe that wandered from place to place before they were all slaughtered when she was little more than a toddler."

"She has lived alone, witnessed death and destruction in many capacities. She has witnessed cruelty, and suffered greatly at the hands of depraved men. And out of each of those experiences, she has grown. She learned that when she was hungry- she needed to eat, so she taught herself to hunt, track and forage. When she was attacked, she needed to fight- and though she had no prior training before she _is_ quite lethal."

"But above those things, she united warring royal households and saved thousands upon _thousands_ of lives single handedly by acting as a diplomat for them. Before the world fell into ruin- those households and their people _finally_ came to know peace. So do not think that simply because of her age, she is weak and has contributed nothing to us. She leads us because we were falling into chaos again and we all trust and respect her to make the choices that we cannot. I have already lost my two youngest brothers to this pleague. And Sin has lost one of his friends. The other life that was lost was a possible ally. He was young, hot headed and incredibly foolish."

"He questioned Ali's orders at every turn and paid a heavy price for it. We would all hate to see such a thing happen again with you and yours. Now, are there any more questions?"

There was silence for a moment before Sophia looked at Ali and said in an awed tone, "You're a princess?"

Ali looked at the girl for a moment and then muttered, " _Former_. My people were annihilated."

"But you're still alive. Doesn't that technically mean that you are still a princess?"

 _"No."_ Ali said simply as she slowly began to collect her dishes and then stood up and quietly left the room when Ren said,

"In all actuality, Ali has denounced her throne. She felt that stepping up and being crowned when she has done nothing to deserve such an honor would be...well, wrong. Besides, a person cannot rule without people. Without people in need of her guidance, her life would be absolutely meaningless. So she lives with us, as an ordinary girl. As much as I am loath to say it; because it seems like I am belittling or disrespecting her in some way- Her life is no more _valuable_ than ours and vice versa."

No sooner had he stopped speaking, Sin decided to chime in. "Actually, your wrong there Ren. Ali's life is invaluable now more than ever."

Curious as to what Sin was talking about, Dale asked. "What do you mean? How is her life invaluable?"

"Mn. I'll have to show you before you'll understand completely." The man said as he slowly stood up and left the room to fetch the girl and returned a few moments later and brought her over to stand by the table where Rick and his group were seated and tugged up one of her shirt sleeves so that they could see her arm.

There on her forearm was a piece of muscle missing and what looked alarmingly like a fully healed series of puckered little scars resembling teeth marks.

 _Walker_ teeth marks to be exact.

His eyes widening in shock as he reached out and very gently grasped the girl's arm in his hands and examined the bite for a moment before asking, "When did this happen?"

"About six months ago. One of the others had gone hunting and wound up injured. The smell of the blood drew a number of those...things and Ali found him just in time to prevent him from losing life and limb. She killed the others before stepping between him and the last one, sacrificing a piece of her own arm so that the thing would be too busy to chew on our friend while she grabbed him and ran."

"D-did she get sick?"

"For a little while, yes, but nothing too terrible. We knew what to look for due to the ones that we lost to bites, so she wasn't alone when she got sick. And we monitored her everyday for several weeks just to be sure that she was fine. But she did run a small fever, and suffered some nausea. All of which were taken care of with some herbs that she has been growing her."

"W-Wait. Okay hold on a second- I'm still trying to wrap my mind around someone managing to survive a bite from one of those things." Rick said sounding more than a little bit rattled by the concept of a survivor surviving a lethal, bacteria riddled bite from a walker. "You said that she has herbs here that she was treated with?"

"Yes. Some old medicinal herbs and remedies."

"H-Has anyone else b-been-"

"Yes, several." Sin said as he reached up to the collar of his shirt and gently tugged it aside a little bit so that they could see the faded old bite wound there. "Myself, Ren, Alex, Jareth and Hina as well as Ali, have all been bitten at one point or another."

Everyone gaped at him for a moment as Dale asked, "When you were bitten, how did you treat the injury?"

"I didn't treat it, in fact the last I recall I was unconscious and bleeding to death."

"Then how-" Glen started to ask as Sin looked down at the girl. Silently indicating that she knew how to take care of walker bites and help the ones bitten actually live.

Now things were beginning to make a tad bit more sense to the group as to why a mere child was leading them. Sin had hinted that the girl was incredibly strong, durable, and intelligent- but this was a whole new level of odd. Now it seemed as if the man were hinting that the girl also had some level of medical knowledge on top of everything else.

Which just may be so.

After all, he didn't know of any other people who had their entire people wiped out as a toddler and lived off of the land for god knew how long just to survive.

Maybe while she had been living off of the land when she were younger she had stumbled upon something that was common knowledge. Even backwater hicks like Merle knew that _that_ tended to happen on occasion. So it was possible, right?

Slowly reaching up so that he could gently tug Ali's sleeve back into place, rick gave the girl an encouraging smile and watched as she tilted her head back to look up at Sin and then nodded her head and said, "I'm going on patrol. Stay out of trouble and please assign rooms for everyone upstairs. And see to it that they have spare clothing and stuff too."

"Okay. Take one of the others with you."

"Okay." And with that, Ali stepped away from Rick and Sin and everyone else and began making a beeline towards the nearest door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Okay, quick word of warning.**

 **Hina isn't doing to Aladdin what was mentioned in prior chapters. He asked, and due to the world of the Walking Dead being a dying world with few people- she accepted.**

 **I'm still leaning towards either a Rick or Daryl pairing with her later on. So I don't want anyone saying that he's abusing her or anything due to her age and stuff.**

 **He isn't.**

 **Despite Aladdin's physical age, she's actually centuries old. Her body just hasn't caught up yet. So- let's see what happens before anyone flips out on me.**

* * *

The moment that Sin heard the front door creak shut, he then turned his attention to Rick and his group and said in response to the former question asked of him, "Alex and several of the others were with me at the time that I was bitten and were debating on whether to leave me behind or not when Ali told them to pick me up and run. She apparently had calculated the odds of saving me against the odds of losing me, and felt that saving me _was_ the better option."

"When we got here, Ali and one of the other's in our group who is a healer began working on me. I was stitched up, bandaged and had some odd herbal concoction poured down my throat for several hours- maybe longer. The herbal concoction was to help fight off fever and infection while allowing me to sleep without feeling any pain and recuperate as I should have. It took me several days to wake up, but once I did-" Sin fell silent as he was suddenly cut off.

"You were just as much a pain in our butts as you are now," Jareth cut in before then tacking on, "The truth of the matter, Mr. Grimes is that Ali is well versed with medicines and other things. She even has knowledge of how to preform surgeries for trauma to the head, heart, lungs, liver, kidney. Including how to even fix up a severed artery or two. We even have several rooms upstairs where she spends most of her time reading and memorizing medical texts, and going over our supplies, most days. One of us will show all of you where it is in a little while if you want."

"In fact, now that I think of it- we have some stuff that we can use to inoculate each of you against various illnesses and diseases that you may have been exposed to before coming here. We can take care of that, and also give each of you a physical exam while we are at it."

"We'll also need to take note of your blood types- just in case there is an accident and someone needs blood- and we also need to take note of any food or medicine allergies that anyone may have," Jareth said as he awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck before saying, "I know that asking these things is a bit much for your group- but it is one of the requirements of staying."

Rick and several others in his group all looked mildly shocked. But not in a bad way, which led the man and many of the others to agree that he and everyone else would do as they were asked and get inoculated, and have themselves checked over- if it would put the foreigners more at ease.

Though Sin thought that the man pretty much only agreed because he wanted to check out their make shift medical facilities and see if they were lacking anything, and couldn't help the- what was it Ali called his grin now? She had read a book from this world a while back and picked up a phrase or two from it and sometimes applied them to him and his expressions.

Ah yes, that's what she called his grin now- the Cheshire grin. Whatever the hell that meant. He must have been wearing one of those at the moment since Ren walked over to stand next to him and elbowed him sharply in the ribs and hissed, "Wipe that weird look off of your face, Sinbad."

"Hn? Oh sorry." Sinbad said in an slightly amused tone as he absently rubbed at the area that he'd been elbowed in as Jareth motioned for everyone done eating to follow him.

* * *

Ali backed herself against the trunk of a tree and stared at Hinahoho for a moment, more than a little bit shocked and startled by his confession.

In truth the two of them had been working on getting her to no longer fear being touched for a while now. Possibly eight months or longer. About a little longer than when she had been bitten by one of those plague riddled walking corpses. And yeah, they had been making progress and stuff.

She no longer threw people into trees, or punched them where it really, really hurt, or locked herself in her bedroom and cried and disappeared for days upon days or even a week or more at a time and had to be dragged back kicking and screaming like a lunatic.

And yes, she had gone into this particular arrangement totally aware of what _could_ happen and what likely _would_ happen eventually. Especially with Hina as her partner. So his confession- couldn't have, and shouldn't have startled her like it had. And yet it still did.

Maybe because she was worried about what would happen if she allowed him to do as he confessed to wanting. Not that she could wholly blame him or anything. He was now not only the last of his family, but his ancient tribe as well and as such his instinct to procreate were probably eating away at him.

It was natural that he desired to have some of what he had lost again. Even if he was hoping somewhat that she would be the one to give it to him due to the natural shortage of available females that may accept him.

She wouldn't lie, he didn't offer her marriage. He would never offer such a thing to anyone ever again no matter how much he cared about them. It wasn't that he couldn't, but because he was still hung up on the feels of affection that he had once shared with his late wife.

He would never love her.

Not in the same way that he had loved his late wife. And she knew that, and could accept it.

He did however promise that he would _never_ hurt her.

He would always protect her and do what was best for her and 'their' child if she decided to agree with the arrangement moving forward and allowing him to breed her.

This of course meant that if at any time, things became strained between them or, god forbid, he messed things up with her- then he would leave the group for a while and return after a month or so to test and see if she could stand to be around him again.

He refused to push her like others in their group might inevitably do.

After all, he knew that Sinbad had had his eye on her from the beginning. Kouen, wanted her mostly for her knowledge. He even respected her in his own roundabout way, and had even grown to be as protective of her as Alibaba and the rest of them.

Hina had no doubt that his feelings towards her would inevitably come into play.

And then there was Ja-far- the way that he watched her was a little bit unnerving to the man. Though Hina knew deep down that Ja-far wouldn't do anything to hurt her physically, there were many different kinds of hurt that could cause her to unravel. And Hina would be damned if he allowed the little bratling to undo all of his and Aladdin's hard work. She had far too many good qualities that would leave the world just a bit more bereft if anything ever happened to her. It was partially for this reason, among others, that Hina decided that Aladdin would be an excellent mother to his child.

But again it was her decision.

If she wasn't yet ready for such a thing to occur, then he would leave her be and not ask again until she was older.

He was a proud man and warrior. And though he could not deny that he cared for Aladdin in _some_ small way- both as a good friend and a comrade- he _longed_ for some small piece of himself to continue existing, even in this world... He would not beg or bully the girl.

It would be cruel to do so.

So instead he stood there waiting for her to respond to what he had said, watching her expression carefully for any signs of panic or the need to flee from him in abject terror.

He was only moderately happy that she didn't seem to feel the need for either one since he didn't exactly feel like hunting her down and dragging her back home and then explaining things to Sin and the others. Though she did seem to be thinking things over fairly hard.

Perhaps he shouldn't have said anything just yet but he hadn't been able to help it. The instinct to breed her had risen within him more and more of late and he'd wanted to give her a fair warning that their next session could wind up with the two of them being far more intimate than she may want to be right now.

Sighing softly, he shifted from foot to foot in an uncomfortable manner when she finally spoke up.

"I-I'll do it." Causing him to glance down at her so quickly that the world practically spun. His icy blue eyes stared into her deep violet for a moment before he slowly nodded and moved to sit himself down on the ground and set his spear aside and then held his hand out to her and waited patiently for her to take it so that he could pull her close to him and settle her so that she was straddling his hips.

It took several moments, but once she was settled over his lap, he rested a large hand on one of her hips and let out a pleased sounding ruble from deep in his chest as he used his fingertips to tilt her head back so that he could kiss her lips.

It was the first time that he'd ever kissed her somewhere aside from where she had been injured when she had been taken by those lunatics before. And usually when he kissed her in those other places, he didn't stop until he tasted her and brought her to climax several times, crying and writhing, before she passed out from full sensory overload.

"H-How are we going to do this?" Aladdin asked awkwardly as Hina began lightly sucking on the tender skin of her collarbone as he slipped one of his hands underneath her shirt to cup her breast as another pleased rumble escaped him before he replied.

"We'll do this like it's just another session. I want you soaked and fully prepared before I do anything more to you. Otherwise it will hurt you. Possibly more than having a large piece of broken glass shoved up inside of you," He noted her expression as he gave his metaphor and could have kicked himself for scaring her, truly he could. But he was merely being honest with her, as he had always been. "Sorry," He said apologetically before going on to say. "I probably shouldn't have used that metaphor. But truth is truth, Aladdin. And this will hurt you far more than it should if I do not prepare you enough."

"O-Oh..." Aladdin said and then hissed in discomfort as he ripped her bra off of her and held it up in front of her eyes for a moment, before chucking it over his shoulder and then using one hand to hold her in place against him, shifted their position so that she was underneath him on the leaf covered ground and began the somewhat irksome work of divesting her of her clothing, with the exception of her shirt.

He knew how much she hated being completely naked and vulnerable to him. So he usually let her keep her shirt on just in case she freaked out on him.

Today wouldn't really be all that different yet he couldn't help but feel excited at the prospect of her letting him breed her. She was giving him a great gift, something of himself and his people to keep living for and keep fighting for should everyone else fall.

He was so grateful to her that he doubted that he would ever be able to repay her even if he managed to live a million years. Leaning over the young girl, he placed another, slightly more heated kiss against her lips and breathed in a reverent tone, "Thank you Aladdin." And then pulled back so that he could see her nod her head, knowing that the next few hours would probably put her body through the ringer.

Hina smiled down at her as his eyes started glowing a faint violent-red color as he slowly removed his clothing and set everything aside. Apparently he was in no hurry to get things over with despite his eagerness.

"T-This won't hurt right?" Aladdin suddenly asked, giving him pause as he noted the slight tremble in her voice. His eyes changed back to their normal calm, icy blue for a moment as he reached out and gently cupped her cheek in his large hand and softly used his thumb to stroke the skin there tenderly.

"I won't lie Aladdin, even with my prepping you- you may feel more than a little bit of pain and discomfort due to your size. You are so much smaller than I...I often times during our sessions fear that I may wind up breaking you with my hands alone. But even if it does hurt or feel uncomfortable, you can back out at any time- and if you decide not to back out and still get hurt, then I'll let Alibaba and Morgiana hold me down so that you can kick my ass. Sound like a plan?"

Aladdin chewed her bottom lip for a moment and then asked, "Will you please stop when I pass out and take me back to the house?"

"You know that I will do anything that you ask."

"O-Okay. Let's do this then." Aladdin said and twitched slightly when he skimmed his lips along the shell of her ear. He was already ahead of her.

Way, way, way ahead of her.


	10. Chapter 10

It was later in the evening when Rick walked downstairs with a funny expression on his face while absently rubbing his upper arm, earning a shit eating smirk of amusement from Shane as he glanced over at him. "Sore?" He asked him in an bemused tone as his dark eyes studied Rick.

"That damn woman could use a better bedside manner. Was she that rough with you?" Rick asked curiously as he walked over to his long time friend as the man sniggered and slowly shook his head no.

"Nah brother, she wasn't that rough with me. I think our new friend Sin razzed her a bit about something and pissed her off."

"Hn. Lucky me. There for a second I was beginning to wonder if I was special of something." Rick said dryly earning another grin from his friend as Daryl walked over, still holding his bow. His muscles were tense as he looked out towards the tree line surrounding the far side of the property.

His eyes narrowed as he caught the faintest hint of movement beyond the tree line as he whistled at both Rick and Shane, and upon getting their attention, motioned with his head towards the trees.

The two turned their heads just so and squinted some against the late evening's dwindling light, and caught sight of something moving there as someone stepped out of the house and said, "Hn. Looks like Hina will finally be returning to the house soon."

The three turned their heads to glance at who had spoken and frowned a little bit as they tried to place a face with the name.

Hina. Hina... Hina was... _Oh!_ He was the giant. Now they remembered who he was. He was the big guy, a little over twelve feet tall with the icy blue eyes and light blue hair. The same guy who's body was built like the goddamn wall of china.

All tall and practically fucking impenetrable.

"It looks like he's carrying something," Someone said as the large man stepped out from the cover of the trees with something- or better yet- someone cradled in the crook of one arm as he walked and carried his massive spear in his free hand.

They could make out dark hair, a small head turned towards the man's chest, and a small, slender and petite looking limb or two before someone muttered a dark oath and suddenly all hell broke loose around them.

The three were quickly and violently shoved, almost causing them to fall as several of the foreigners went tearing across the yard towards the giant yelling various things that Rick, Shane and Daryl could barely make out. Though Glen and Dale didn't seem to have much issue hearing them.

"Uh-oh." Dael muttered as he meandered over to them with a frown on his face as Rick looked towards him for a second and asked,

"Uh-oh? What do you mean uh-oh?" He demanded wondering if he should be worried that someone may have been bitten or something, because deep down despite the fact that Ali and several of her group had managed to survive being bitten- he still didn't know how that was possible and still worried that he would have to put someone that he cared about, down like a rabid animal.

In fact he'd had nightmares pretty much every night about such things ever since finding out how the world was upon waking up in the hospital in Atlanta.

"It looks like something happened to the kid, Ali. Though I don't think that she's been bitten again... Appears more as if she's just passed out or something." Dale said with a slight shrug of his shoulders as Rick and the others turned away from him just in time to see someone quickly take the girl from the giant as the young blond, Alex take a swing at the man and land a good blow on his jaw.

 _"Oooh."_ The three, plus Dale and Glen all said in unison as the big guy went down and the blond pounced on him.

 _"Damn."_ Rick said as he cringed a little bit in sympathy for the giant.

"What the hell is going on, man?" Shane wondered aloud as the rest of their group slowly migrated towards them to see what was up as Daryl said in a bemused tone,

"Who cares. This is interesting. I almost wish that I had a baggy of pork rids and some pop in my hands right about now."

Everyone was quiet for a moment as Sin and Ren and several others appeared from somewhere off to the left of the giant, Alex, and the one that was now holding onto the still, unconscious figure of the girl and began to pull Alex off of the giant as Sin barked orders here and there before turning on the blue haired man and snarling in his face loudly enough for even Rick and the rest of his group to hear from where they were standing on and around the porch, "What the fuck did you do to her?"

The giant merely wiped at his face with the back of his hand and eyed Alex as if he'd like nothing more than to rip the boy's head off and toss it into the woods and then send his torso out to find it.

They couldn't hear the man's response to Sin's question, but from the rigid way that he was standing. And the tenseness of his shoulders- whatever the man had said wasn't perceived as good. Still, unlike Alex, he merely walked over and took the girl from the other person standing there and then turned back towards the house and started walking before pausing just long enough to call out to the others that had also come out to stop the spectacle, and order them to follow him back.

Leaving the giant sitting there for a few moments before he slowly got up and without a single word, walked back into the woods.


	11. Chapter 11

**Warning- possible triggers.**

* * *

The moment that Sin returned to the house carrying the girl, Ali- Rick could see why everyone had been so upset upon noticing her physical state. The poor girl was not only unconscious but her milky white skin had lost what little bit of the golden sun kissed hue that it once possessed hours ago. And in it's wake, made being able to see the mass of discolorations and bruises on her easier to take note of.

Her hair was no longer tied back, and there was dirt and leaves in it as well as a little bit of moss and some blades of wilted grass. Her clothing was rumbled and wrinkled, unlike it had been before when they had first met her. And there were some tears in the hip and leggings of her jeans.

But those bruises and discolorations...those were unmistakable and could only be caused by so many things. Especially the discoloration and bruising around her lips.

The rough condition that she was in was a clear indication of either rough handling/sex or sexual assault.

Watching the man walk by him with the girl, Rick wanted to move forward and open the door to the house for him, but upon hearing a sharp yell from Sin- calling out to the woman that had given him his physical and the really, _really_ unpleasant shot in the arm- to prepare one of the rooms used for the infirmary as another one of the men opened the door for him.

Allowing him to disappear inside while someone went to calm a still raging Alex's temper while Jareth walked over and said, "We're going to hold a meeting about Hina's actions. As new member's of our group- it is within your right to attend. But I suggest leaving those with weak stomachs, and the women and children out of it. And before you ask why the women should stay out of the meeting, it's more for Ali's benefit. Especially since we need to talk as a group and maybe figure out how to handle the situation that we may soon find ourselves in."

Rick nodded his head in agreement and looked to the others.

Glen gulped and looked more than a tad bit nervous due to the somewhat ominous nature of Jareth's words. Shane looked as if he were ready to take on the world bare handed or something.

Making Rick begin to wonder if someone may have messed up his inoculation and switched it out for adrenaline. The man was fucking wired right now. Weirdly so.

Dale and Daryl both had slightly curious/solemn looks on the both of their faces as the younger man stared them all down as Rick agreed, that they _did_ need to sit down and talk about what had just happened. He wanted to know if he should be worried about shit happening to the women in their group or not.

Or worse, to one or both of the kids.

"We'll be there." Rick said as he glanced around at the others.

"Alright, then you can meet us in the living room in ten minutes or so. We'll start talking then." Jareth said as Rick and the others nodded their heads before the man walked up the porch steps and then opened the front door and meandered inside and closed the door softly, but firmly behind him.

They were quiet enough in the few moments between his announcement and his departure that they could hear several people shouting inside of the house. Likely from the make shift infirmary.

And while catching the occasional glimmer of conversation in the hopes of knowing or at least figuring out what was going on- they could hear the others all arguing back and forth. Their voices carrying faintly.

 _"I can't believe that Hina-"_

 _"I can."_

 _"Both of you settle down now!"_

 _"How is Ali?"_

 _"Injured? How bad?"_

 _"Not sure- Some tearing- will hurt a while. Need's rest..."_

Rick blinked as the voices finally trailed off a little bit and internally sighed as he scrubbed his face with his hands and wondered briefly if this place and it's people were actually safe. But he quickly dismissed the idea that they weren't- at least for the time being since he wasn't totally appraised of the situation and what completely caused it.

Ten minutes passed fairly quickly, and after asking Lori and the others to go ahead and explore a little bit- and asking T-dog if he minded watching everyone just in case; something that the man readily agreed to with a hastily explained, "This ain't none of my business. If I need to know, one of you can fill me in later."

Lori, Carl, T-dog, Carol, Sophia and Andrea disappeared to go check out their new potential home while Rick, Glen, Dale, Shane and Daryl all quietly migrated into the house.

Into the living room where several of the foreigners were already sitting, waiting patiently for the others to show up and to start the talk. Rick and the others made themselves comfortable in the spare seats that had been carried into the room for them by someone.

Once everyone was finally there and either seated or standing in their respective places, Sin sighed and looked around for a moment before asking, "Is this everyone?"

"Yes I believe so. Rick? Everyone with you?" Jareth asked.

Rick nodded his head and muttered a soft sounding, "Yeah". And sat forward in his seat a little bit and rested his elbows on his knees and folded his fingers together as Sin then turned to the young woman that had checked everyone over earlier, Riha, was it?

He didn't exactly recall at that moment, but made a note to learn later on as Sin asked how Ali was doing. The woman replied automatically, almost robotically. As if the thought of what had happened to the girl weighed far too heavily on her mind and she wanted nothing more than to escape the thought of the girl's possible assault.

"She's going to be out for a while. I had to give her something for pain and to keep her asleep for a bit when she started to rouse a little bit. I-I didn't want her to freak out if- if..."

"You did well Riha, all things considered. I think Ali would appreciate the rest. What about her injuries? Are they bad?"

"No. There was some vaginal tearing detected, but that's not really consistent with- At least in my limited experience it isn't. Did Hina say anything Sin? Why he would do this to Ali of all people?"

"All he said was that he didn't force her. Alex attacking him as he did, made him clam up pretty damned fast. So I do not know or understand all of the many, many reasons that this has occurred. But I think that I do have an idea of the reason why. I'll have to verify them with Ali once she awakens though."

Sin said before then turning to Rick and the others and saying, "Many of us know that you're a little lost as far as this conversation goes. I and some of the others were hoping to give Ali a little bit more time to get to know you before we had to have this conversation. But unfortunately Hina has backed us into a corner here. So please, _listen_ to what I have to say. And above all else- _don't_ judge Ali for what happened to her. None of it was truly her fault."

"Okay. We're listening." Rick said almost anxiously after a few heartbeats of silence. Sin nodded and then started speaking again.

"We've been here pretty much since the beginning. Even then Ali was the one who united and lead us. Though she often tends to downplay her role in things. On one such occasion, not long after she became our official group leader and asked myself and Ren to co-lead and advise. She got fed up with us for arguing so often and wandered off or the property alone. Without telling anyone."

"We know now that she only meant to walk around for a bit and calm her nerves. Leading a group like ours isn't easy, you know. Even for a kid as intelligent as she. Anyways, she wandered off, and at some point ran across other survivors similar to yourself and decided to go and see if they needed help. She went in blind- probably because of her age at the time. You know how kids can be. Especially the young ones. They are so hopefully optimistic, and long to be of help. But even she will admit, now, that it was a dumb move. But she had only the best of intentions-"

Rick started to get a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach upon hearing this. He could only imagine what had happened. And none of it was a bit of good.

"When she approached them, and they realized that she was a girl, and possibly part of a group with a safe place- they took her... We didn't even know that she was missing for almost an entire day, and by that time, they had taken her _miles_ from here and began...interrogating her about us."

"But Ali is strong, she always has been. So even after they beat her and broke a few of her bones and threatened to do worse, she merely thinned her lips and refused to speak."

That sinking feeling in the pit of Rick's stomach started to turn into a knot of anxiety, anger and rage the likes of which was threatening to send him off of the deep end.

"So it got worse. Much, much worse. They shaved her bald, cut her clothing from her body and mutilated parts of her chest in the process. But that wasn't enough for them. They wanted to break her. So they- they-" Sin stopped speaking for a moment when his voice started to shake and he felt as if he were going to break down and cry like he had so many times before.

"They raped her didn't they?" Rick asked in an almost growling tone. He couldn't help his anger at what Sin was trying to tell them, as someone who was a father of a young kid- the stuff, the truly bad and horrifying stuff- should _never_ get anywhere close to a child.

Not Ali. Not Carl. Not even Sophia.

But Rick knew from years of experience as a cop that there were some truly sick people in the world. Sin looked at him for a moment before slowly nodding his head before Alex spoke up.

"There were fifteen of them that had branched off from a group of forty that was hanging around the area at the time looking for stuff and a safe place, and girls to make sport of. We went after her, but you must understand- it took us _days_ to find her."

"When we finally found her, it was still day. And we had to wait... Myself, Alex, Ren and Masrur waited just beyond the camp, hid ourselves in the trees and were waiting for dark to fall so that we could take her back and deal with them... But after so many days of- She didn't even have much of a voice in which to scream anymore. And no strength left to fight. She was a mass of bruises, and dried, caked blood and still they were taking one after the other. The last one that had her, just as night started to fall- used a broken glass bottle on her- down there." Sin said, awkwardly indicating that the girl had been mutilated internally as well as externally.

Causing Rick's eyes with widen in horror before he turned his head to give the others a quick glance and check their reactions. Each of them were reacting about as expected. Save for Shane, apparently he was listening while in his mind's happy place.

It was probably the only thing keeping his normally hair trigger temper under control.

"We managed to get her away from them, to kill them for what they had done and bring her back here before she bled out. But it was a close thing. We had to keep her unconscious for about a week in a half with sleeping meds. And when she woke up- she was bed ridden for months just so that she could heal. She didn't want anyone near her. With the exception of several people in particular. Alex, Hina, and Jareth were among the only males that she trusted even a little bit."

"She didn't eat. Didn't really speak- She's always been quiet but now her silence is often deafening. There were even a few times after she was mobile again where if a man touched her- she'd attack them for fear that they were going to hurt her."

"She's been getting better in recent months. She's a bit more open, somewhat like she used to be. Her optimism about the way of things now has been damaged by what happened, but I don't think it was destroyed. I've had my suspicions about what she was doing since we've already taught her how to fight, but there was nothing to confirm things as of yet. At least not until earlier with Hina-" Sin said soberly as Rick asked,

"Did you take care of the people that took Ali? That hurt her?"

"We hunted down every one of the fuckers and skinned them alive." Alex said angrily.

"All of them? All forty?"

"Yes," Ren said quietly before then tacking on, "We could not take the risk that any of them might come upon us and take Ali again or one of the other girls for that matter. None of them would have survived a second encounter with those people."

"That's understandable." Rick said before then asking, "What do you think happened between your man, Hina and Ali? Do you think that he-" Rick was cut off by Jareth's quick,

"No. He claims that he didn't force her. And I for one believe him. I've known him since I was barely a few years younger than Ali herself, Hina is a lot of things. But he has a very kind and compassionate heart. If anything, Hina has probably been working with Ali on getting over her initial fear of men and touch. To do that, he probably had to train her body and mind to associate specific stimuli with pleasure. If that is so, then specific rules had to be agreed upon before the two even began their arrangement."

"How can you be sure that that is what happened? And wouldn't the state that she was in when she was brought back, be a bit much for such an arrangement?"

"Not necessarily. In our country, such arrangements are common for women or girls that have suffered through specific traumatic experiences. I myself, had been called on a time or two to help assault victims," Jareth said before going on to explain a little bit more, "It isn't entirely uncommon for the one helping the victim to inevitably get attached and seek to move things forward to prove that there is nothing to fear with the right partner. But there has to be a specific amount of trust between the two, and the rules laid out between them must be obeyed at all times."

"In other words, what Jareth is saying is- if Ali hadn't wanted to take things further- then Hina would have backed off." Ren said as Sin snorted before muttering.

"He wouldn't have just backed off, he would have put space between them so quickly that her head would have spun from how fast he moved."

"So...he isn't a danger to any of us?"

"No. We are just...concerned about the situation that may arise from this...event."

"What situation are you-" Rick started to ask when Glen chimed in,

"For god's sake Rick, how dense are you? They mean there is a strong possibility that Ali may get pregnant."


	12. Chapter 12

**Hey everyone, quick announcement- I'm working on a new Walking dead fic with a Rick/OC/Daryl pairing where the guys are part of a subspecies and are ranked as Alpha's of their group and the OC is a very, very rare- normal human girl that they intend to claim.**

 **Not going to lie, I'm excited about it and scared too.**

 **Mostly because of the whole Alpha mentality and how they will handle the OC will be considered dark and abusive when they have no understanding of those concepts.**

 **I hope to have it up soon so keep an eye out.**

* * *

Rick, Dale, Glen and Daryl all walked away form the little meeting an hour or so later feeling almost as if they had been physically and emotionally put through the ringer. Whereas Shane maintained an oddly detached and level head the whole time.

Probably because he was still mentally in his happy place or something. Rick wasn't sure, he just knew that Shane was weird sometimes.

Granted that none of them had been aware of just how bad things had gotten for the slight group of foreigners, but they had never expected the youngest of them to have suffered so much at the hands of strangers akin to themselves. In fact, Rick was still somewhat surprised that the kid had even allowed them to come and fetch Sophia after she and her friends had saved her and brought her here.

He would have half expected someone who had gone through such a traumatic experience as the one that she had suffered- to look upon everyone with a dick between their legs as a literal enemy and treat them with as much malice and hostility as they could muster.

Yet Ali didn't. Or hadn't rather.

True she hadn't really been alone with any of them without someone well within sight or hearing distance, and yeah, the kid barely said two damned words to anyone unless it couldn't be avoided, but aside from that- she was exactly as Sin had described personality wise.

He innocence and childhood had been ripped from her in one of the most agonizing ways that any of them could imagine, and she was damaged. But not destroyed. In fact she was as far from destroyed as any young girl who had suffered the same experiences could be.

And letting the giant, Hina do what he had to her earlier just proved that she was a far braver and stronger person than even _they_ could ever realize.

Rick himself wasn't totally sure what she must have been thinking when she allowed Hina to have sex with her. But he knew that from the way Sin spoke before, there was a deeper reasoning behind this particular incident than they were all aware of.

He knew one thing for sure though, he and the others would have to help keep an eye on the kid over the next few weeks. At least until something in her changed. If it did anyways.

They could keep an eye on her and make sure that she didn't get overly stressed or something. And they could even take shifts to go patrol around the property if she decided to take a walk like she seemed to do quite often. He'd have to talk to Lori, and Carol about helping out too. And he was pretty sure that Dale was going to speak with Andrea.

Glen was already making a beeline toward where T-dog was sitting, ready to fill him in on todays events while Rick and Dale and Daryl were still sort of in the process of- well, _processing_.

All Rick could really do was try to help and keep things calm around the property and the foreigners otherwise someone would probably suggest that they try to take the place form their new friends, and if that happened... There would be blood shed, and that was simply something that he wanted to avoid no matter the cost.

Not long after the talk with the foreigners, someone came outside to tell them all that they could come inside and take some rooms upstairs that were free. They were even told that almost every room had a nice small bathroom with a fully functioning shower or bath that they could use.

And even mentioned in passing that there were some clean clothing in the dressers that they could use if they decided to bathe.

Frankly none of them needed to be told twice, everyone was practically itching for a good bath/shower, and some nice clean clothing to wear. Not to mention a soft bed to lay their heads upon and get some rest without having to worry about someone waking them up in the middle of the night because a walker/walkers had attacked them.

That night, Rick and the rest of his group stayed indoors and for once in a very long time- since before the end of everything, they all began to feel like they were people again.

They bathed, changed their clothing and slept like they were dead.

There were no creaking noises that comes from the house settling, no horrifying growling or snarling deafening them. Just peace and quiet and the occasional chirping of crickets and soft snoring coming from various other bedrooms. Morning came faster than any of them really wanted it too, and with it- the early morning crowing of a few roosters that even Rick would begrudgingly admit, he wanted to strangle for waking him up so suddenly.

But it was among one of the better wake up calls he'd had in a good long while, so he didn't bother complaining much except when he was outside after he and his group all had eaten a nice big breakfast, where he spent several minutes glaring at the rooster and picturing it being cooked in the oven sometime soon.

Several days since the incident with the kid Ali passed in this fashion, and before he knew it five days had passed. And he woke up one morning and after going about his routine of showering, shaving and dressing, left Lori to sleep in for a little while before breakfast and then went down stairs tot he kitchen to grab something to drink.

Most people in the house tended to drink juice that they had squeezed themselves from various fruits in the morning when they first got up. And while it wasn't his first choice in beverages since he was used to functioning on caffeine and sometimes tended to miss it an awful lot- he didn't complain overly much for worry that he would seem ungrateful to the foreigners for everything that they had done so far.

Stepping into the kitchen, he was about to make a beeline for the fridge when he caught sight of Ali standing over by the stove with a small scowl on her face, attempting to cook what looked oddly like an over buttered grilled cheese.

Rick would be lying if he said that he wasn't surprised to see her up and about after sleeping for five whole days straight, but seeing her try to cook for herself when Riha had stressed days before that she needed to rest and stay off of her feet until the tearing healed a bit more.

Which was only part of the reason why he decided to go and help her out. Another reason why he decided to go over and help her was that he finally noticed the small amount of black smoke starting to rise up and became vaguely alarmed that the kid was going to burn the house down.

However he didn't want to scare the kid, especially since he doubted that she would appreciate having someone slink up behind her. So he decided to clear his throat a little bit, and waited until she moved her head a little to show that she was aware of his presence before walking over and peeking over her shoulder at the rapidly burning mess that once upon a time resembled actual food and said, "Morning."

She looked at him for a moment before nodding her head in acknowledgement of his greeting, however awkward or strained it seemed. And waited for him to say or do something else when the frying pan finally caught on fire.

Looking away from him, he saw the somewhat comical look of disbelief on her pretty face as he quickly moved her aside and then grabbed the pan and removed it from the stove and then headed out the kitchen door.

And used the flaming remnants of the grilled cheese to finally get revenge on the damned rooster that had been crowing and waking him up since morning one.

Once that was done, and he absolutely made certain that he hadn't 'accidentally' burned down the chicken coop, he went back inside to find the girl sitting at the closest dining room table with her head in her hands. Looking to him as if she were upset by either the fact that she hadn't been able to cook the grilled cheese perfectly or she was stressing because she had wasted food.

Whatever the reason, he knew that it was likely that she had a lot on her mind, so he sought to sooth her a little bit by scraping what was left of the charred remains of the former sandwich from the pan, washing it, and then quickly and then after he had quietly dried it, set it back on the stove to heat at a lower temperature, found and over buttered two pieces of bread and grabbed a slice of cheese and quickly unwrapped it and slapped everything together and then put it in the pan after he found some spray to grease it.

The whole thing barely took him more than ten minutes, and the entire time he was cooking, he kept casting concerned glances towards the kid. Who oddly enough hadn't moved at all since sitting down.

That stillness of hers, under different circumstances would have been more than a little bit alarming. But under current circumstances, she probably had so much on her mind that she wasn't even aware of just how still she was being.

Upon finishing his task of cooking the grilled cheese, Rick took the pan off of the eye and set it on one of the others so that he could grab a plate to put it on and while he was at it grabbed Ali a glass for something to drink since she was probably thirsty too after sleeping for five days straight, and then began putting everything together.

Finally after fixing the food, and pouring the girl some milk that he had found in the fridge, he headed into the dinning room and quietly set the plate and milk down in front of her. And almost jumped out of his skin when her hand shot out and grabbed the food off of the plate and she quickly tore it in half and stuffed one part in her mouth and- he didn't even think that she bothered chewing it.

One second it was in her mouth and the next she had simply swallowed it whole!

"Hey, hey, hey, slow down- you'll choke!" Rick said in slight alarm as she repeated the same motion with what was left over before then grabbing the glass of milk, spilling a little bit as she quickly brought it to her mouth and chugged it until it was gone before setting the glass back down and slowly wiping any excess trace amount of it from her pale pink lips with a slightly shaky hand before looking at him and cringing a little bit at how he was looking at her.

He was looking at her as if she were an wild animal that was rabid or something.

It just wasn't really what she needed from another person at the moment. She already felt badly about what had happened with Hina and the others. She had known that maybe she should explain things first to smooth the way a bit, but she had been worried that if she had put the man off any in regards to his request- that she would chicken out and let him down.

Wiping her mouth again in nervous habit, she looked away from the man's gaze and fumbled around for something to say as he moved to pick up the plate and glass and suddenly asked, "Feel a little bit better now? Or are you still a bit hungry?"

She looked up at him for a second, her dark violet eyes studying his face for a moment before she rasped out. "S-Still a bit hungry..."

Rick nodded his head and gave her a kind smile and then said, "I would imagine so after sleeping for five days straight. So how about I fix you another and I'll keep em coming until you tell me to stop. Sound good?"

Aladdin didn't speak this time, she just nodded her head quietly and went back to sitting very still while he collected her dishes and walked back into the kitchen for round two.


	13. Chapter 13

**I can multi task!**

 **I've already got 4 complete chapters to the Alpha Rick story. Long chapters too. That's part of the reason this has been a bit slower than the other chapters. I tend to slow down a little bit when something new is dominating my mind.**

 **Once I get it out good enough I should be able to update fairly decent.**

* * *

Four in a half grilled cheeses later, Ali handed Rick half of her latest sandwich and told him that she was full and then polished off her latest glass of milk and sat back with a soft sigh as Rick eyed her strangely for a moment before deciding to broach the elephant in the room while he could.

Before anyone else woke up and came down for breakfast.

"So...um, you and the big guy..." He paused for a moment as her violet eyes flickered to his face for a moment before she asked,

"What about us?"

"He claimed that he didn't force himself on you."

She turned her head now to glare at him, her expression furious at the mere thought that Hina would do something so- so _disgusting_ and cruel and quickly bit out, _"He. Didn't."_

Rick must have picked up on her anger more easily than she thought, because the man quickly backtracked and held his hands up in a slightly placating gesture as he said, "I'm not accusing him, nor trying to offend. So please don't misunderstand me on this. I merely brought it up because everyone is...curious as to why you would be okay with-"

Ali frowned for a moment before understanding finally dawned on her and she sighed again as she let her head drop back against the back of her seat. "To understand, I would have to tell you about Hina."

"Okay, so tell me about him. From what little bit everyone has said so far, he's a decent guy-"

Ali snorted slightly as if his words amused her somewhat and said, "Hina is a little bit more than _just_ decent. He's one of the kindest and most compassionate people that I know. I met him almost four years ago. Before... Anyways, he was a widower with three kids. Two sons, and an adopted daughter. His wife died well over ten years before we met, cause his kids were still young."

Rick stayed quiet as she spoke, his mind absorbing everything like a sponge.

"I had noticed shortly after we met, that most of the people around him tended to look at him- just once- they would see his big size, his height, his build, and they would automatically fear him. Thinking that he was a brute and nothing else. Or that he was one of those insane people who tend to think that might makes right. He didn't visibly react to it when it would happen, but it bothered him. I could see it. Those closest to him could see it."

"When everything fell apart, he lost his kids, and his tribe- which is bad, especially for some one like Hina. His people were a small tribe to begin with, but they were excellent warriors and fighters. Losing them all has taken a toll on him that is a tad bit greater than everyone else's losses would. He _needs_ someone of his own tribe, his own blood to keep fighting and living for. Without that, he'd eventually give up and let those things eat him alive... Because of the grief, ya know? It'd eventually overwhelm him. Steal his will to keep going."

"I don't want my friend to die like that. I want him to live, to have what he needs to keep going... Losing him would pretty much cripple Sin and some of the others. It might even cost them their lives too. So I said yes. Even though I knew that the other's likely wouldn't like or understand it. And it kind of scares me, being a mother at my age. I at least know that regardless of what happens to me or this place, my child _will_ have a loving and doting father and a whole bunch of pesky adopted siblings and uncles and aunts to give him or her what they need. Protection, safety, security- home and hearth..."

"Okay, but what about what happened to you before? Didn't...uh, how can I say this delicately?" Rick wondered aloud as he spotted Daryl peeking into the room with Glen's head near his shoulder. It was more than a little bit obvious that the two had been there for a little while and were simply listening in. "Didn't being- you know- _with_ him scare you?" Rick said awkwardly and then internally cringed.

Okay so maybe that wasn't the best way to say things. But it seemed no less awkward any other way either. There was simply no way to ask the question and spare her.

Ali looked at him for a moment before saying, "Being with him at first terrified me despite knowing who he is and trusting him. I can't begin to tell you how many panic attacks I have had. But Hina never takes any offense or pushed me more than I can stand unless I said that I was good. Instead, he backs off and sometimes if he thinks that I really need it, he just holds me until I'm calm again."

"Sounds like a nice guy."

"He is."

"Then I guess we just need to adapt to the idea of a baby coming some months from now, huh?" Rick said as he stuffed the last bit of the grilled cheese in his mouth and began chewing slowly as he tried to think of all the different ways that this situation could blow up in their faces.

Not just his people's. But Ali's as well.

* * *

Once everyone was up and noticed that Ali was finally awake, her entire group took turns hugging the girl and ruffling her already tangled hair, making the mess she would have to fix later on- that much worse. And finally once each of them were done, someone mentioned needing to tell Hina to come back to the house.

Apparently he'd been temporarily banned by Alex so that she could rest undisturbed. But now that he could see that she was okay with his own eyes, he mentioned bringing Hina back and maybe apologizing for reacting the way that he had. Sin merely nodded his head and let the young man dash outside to do just that with his girlfriend right on his heels.

Rick noted as they left that neither one carried a gun. And though Alex carried an ornate dagger of some kind, his girlfriend didn't carry any weapons at all on her. Not only that but she was barefoot.

Which in and of itself was dangerous. Especially out in the woods.

One never knew when they would come up upon a nasty surprise in the form of a severed walker head. One that hadn't been properly taken care of just yet.

Such a thing could still manage to bite someone, and as such could make them sick, injure or even kill them. It was something that Rick needed to talk to the others in Ali's group about and see if he could change things a bit.

* * *

To say that Hina was surprised by Alibaba, and Morgiana's appearance in his little camp in the woods- would be a gross understatement. To say that he was a little bit angry and embittered by Alibaba's previous attack on his person would be the understatement of the century.

He still couldn't believe that that Alibaba would think so low of him that he would believe that he had raped Ali.

"Hina, there you are." The blond said as they walked over to where Hina was sitting and stopped well within reaching distance. "Ali is finally awake," The moment that the blond said those words, Hina's eyes turned a peculiar shade of glowing red for a moment before changing back to their original color. "And Sin and everyone wants you to come back to the house. And also- I'm sorry for attacking you like I did. Logically I know that you aren't that person. You could never be that sort of person. But you didn't see Ali and what happened to her before we brought her back." Alibaba's voice was beginning to tremble slightly now, as the warrior eyed him in silence for a moment before hefting himself up from where he'd been seated, and brushed by the teen.

But didn't walk away without having the final word. "You're right, I didn't see what happened to her. But _I_ was one of the first she trusted after. Try to keep that in mind the next time you want to fly into a rage over a perceived threat to Aladdin."


	14. Chapter 14

Ali wasn't 'cleared' to do anything for about a week in a half. After that everyone just seemed to have settled into a little bit of a routine. Rick and the people in his group were even given small jobs so that they could contribute. And when he said small, he meant _small_.

Apparently Ali and only a select few others did _any_ of the real work around the house and beyond.

And while Rick could understand some reasons behind this- and even saw it as sort of a potential probation period in which to earn the girl's trust and make friends and such. It just wasn't practical. Not only that but the lack of work made others- like Shane and Andrea more often than not went out of their way to undermine the girl's orders by going behind her back and such.

Which was something that her friends, and the rest of her group found themselves almost _continuously_ warning the two about in one form or another since they all knew that the girl would only take their shit for so long before she forced them to leave. Despite the warnings though, things continued as they had been.

Today though, today had been quiet so far.

Hina was sitting on a tree limb in one of the apple tree's in the orchard, absently picking and dropping some of the ripe apples from their individual tree limbs and dropping them down to some of the girls. Lori, and Carol of course having not been able to pass up the possibility of having fresh apples to eat, cook or even bake with- had decided to join the other women in collecting some.

Which Ali nor anyone else didn't seem to terribly mind. The fresh fruits were still in season, and inevitably Ali would need such things for when she got pregnant. So some of her friends were sort of stocking up on some of the fruits that they fully intended to dry out for the kid to eat later.

They had finally finished moving everyone in Rick's group into the house, provided clothing, extra weapons, medical care, first aid kits- and just about anything else that the former sheriff and the others could even think of.

Everyone was eating and sleeping regularly now that they had a safe place to lay their heads and didn't have to move around so frequently. And those whom had lost weight from partial starvation, were quickly regaining it plus a few pounds extra.

Ali had spent the rest of the other day when she had awoken, assigning tasks and speaking with them on what they should and shouldn't do. She had hinted that if anyone was ever bitten or scratched, that they should be brought straight to her and the other's _immediately_.

Another thing that Rick had found out was that Ali and the other's, should the need ever arise when they would have to abandon the area that they were currently occupying- would evacuate Rick and his people and relocate them to another location thirty miles away that was currently occupied by other survivors that they had found and helped.

She had also let them know that at some point in the near future one or two of them would be going to check up on the people to make sure that everything was okay on their end. The trip usually lasted several days, depending on what was needed and what wasn't.

Which was understandable, he supposed.

After all she was trying to see to their needs and planning to do what was needed to keep them alive. Dale, himself, Glen and Daryl all mentioned wanting to go with her and see how she managed things, and got a peculiar look from the girl.

It wasn't an unwelcome look. Merely odd. As if their request had slightly taken her aback or simply wasn't expected.

However in the end, she had given them permission to go with her when she went and was even nice enough to detail how things would go. It was somewhat funny to Rick and Dale and Glen and Daryl just how creepily organized her plan was. It was almost as if Ali had been part of a military unit or something at one point in time, despite her age.

Everything that she did and planned all boiled down to strategy's that would be the least likely to get them into a situation that they couldn't handle.

It was sort of...daunting to say the least.

But once she had finished speaking with them about what would happen, she had then told them that she would give them a heads up at least three days in advance- and she fully expected them to spend those three days with their family- if they had them- and friends.

None of them knew what to think of that at first, but by the time the three day warning came up- they had each figured it out. Or at least got the general gist of things.

The three day warning in which they would spend doing nothing but spending time with their family/friends, was a sort of 'goodbye' for anyone that may not make it back if something went wrong and she nor her people could save the person/persons injured, bitten or dying.

It was a...kindness that was difficult to understand.

A chance to give their family/friends one last good memory of them before they were gone. Which was why on the day that they were going to leave, once Rick had slid into the passenger side seat beside Ali, whom would be driving, with Daryl on the other side of him.

He leaned over and whispered a gentle, 'thank you' as the back car door closed and Ren, Sin, Glen, and Jareth were finally inside of the car.

Ali merely nodded to him as Sin said excitedly, "Come on, let's get this show on the road!" Earning a slightly disgruntled look from over the girl's shoulder as she started the car and then said.

"Jareth. Smack Sin please. I don't want anyone acting hyper on this trip."

There was the sound of flesh meeting flesh followed by a loud yelp and several sniggers of amusement as the car lurched forward and began to slowly make it's way down the dirt road towards the street.


	15. Chapter 15

The trip off of the homestead was fairly quiet and semi uneventful. If one could count winding up parked in front of a herd with their driver quickly scrambling out of the vehicle along with one of the guys from the back- uneventful. The moment that they had come across the herd, Rick and Daryl and Glen had all tensed up.

Call them crazy but seeing a bunch of walkers staggering and stumbling along the road towards them, with numbers in the hundreds, made them feel more then a tad bit uncomfortable. Especially considering that the damned things could sense and smell them through the flimsy glass and steel of the compact vehicle that they were sitting in.

And when Ali sighed and quietly slipped from the car with Jared not too far behind, they had become even more ill at ease with everything.

"What are they doing?" Rick demanded in his most authoritive tone. Yet he received no answer from Sin or Ren. In fact the two didn't look or seem overly concerned at all about their friends. Which was unusual since they were fairly protective of Ali at the very least.

Both because of her past and because of her being their leader.

"They need to get back in the car!" He heard Daryl say in a hushed and semi panicked tone while Rick silently agreed with him and simply sat in his seat, his hand anxiously gripping his gun and watching to see what it was that Ali and Jared were going to do.

From the semi relaxed way the two were standing, it would seem as if the hoard heading their way didn't seem like a threat to them.

But that was insane. Of course the damned things were a threat.

They attacked, _killed_ and _ate_ people! That alone made them a much bigger threat than their seemingly weak appearance led them all to first believe.

Rick narrowed his eyes a little bit as Ali turned her head and said something to Jared and then turned back to face the hoard which was now almost upon them and then did the stupidest, most surprising thing.

Instead of moving back to get back into the vehicle, the girl bolted forward towards the walkers.

Breaking through the first few lines of bodies and quickly disappeared as something that looked like blades attached to long leather ropes appeared in Jared's hands at which point the man began to slowly spin them so that the ropes were moving in a wide circle on both sides of him before they picked up speed. Gradually causing the blades at the ends of the leather ropes to begin to sing loudly enough for everyone in the car to hear them.

There were several snarls from some of the closer walkers before they made some sort of attempt to get in close to the man, but were easily cut down when he finally took up a stance and began to cleave out a path through them.

The stance was unfamiliar to him. But Glen must have seen something like it before from somewhere, because the man was incredibly impressed. Especially by the fact that Jared was managing to take out the walkers without leaving himself open and vulnerable.

They watched him almost single handedly wipe out the first half of the walkers in the hoard when Daryl noticed that the rest of them were missing and was quick to point out that their broken bodies were littering the ground half a mile from where Jared was standing.

It was at this point that Ren muttered, "Ali's been busy. I know that she can be destructive, but I think that was a little bit overboard."

"Well attacking the hoard from two spots was really the best way to thin out the numbers to allow us safe passage," Sin finally said as he leaned up a bit and rested his arms on the back of the front seat between Rick and Daryl before then saying, "Of course it goes without saying that we will not mention this incident to Hina. The man would skin each of us alive if he knew that we allowed Ali to place herself in danger. Especially when she may already be carrying the next generation of his kin."

Rick and Daryl both looked over their shoulder at the man and then exchanged a glance with each other, both of them silently agreeing to stick close to the girl if for no other reason than to prevent themselves from taking the blame for someone else's foolishness.

Turning their heads back to the front, they saw Ali walking up to Jared and watched as the man pulled something that looked like wet wipes out of his jean pocket and began to wipe at her face and neck in an effort to clean some of the mess off of her while he chided her.

"Honestly Ali, what were you thinking dashing off like that? We aren't in $%^&* anymore, you can't go running off everytime you want to. Especially now. What would Hina say if he found out about this little stunt of yours?"

"I dunno, something along the lines of, 'You put her in danger. Die!'"

"Don't even joke about that!"

"I'm not. He'd really kill the lot of you _if_ he knew," She said as she opened the door to the car and climbed back in again before closing her door and restarting the vehicle and waited patiently while Jared climbed back in before finally saying, "So it's understandable that you lot would save your own skins by saying nothing. Now that that is out of the way, lets go check on the others. I have a feeling that something may be going on that I'm not going to like." She said as the car started moving again as Daryl leaned back a little bit in his seat and whisper/asked,

"She wouldn't really sic that giant fella on us would she?"

There was a chorus of 'yes's from Sin, Jared. Both of whom didn't seem terribly concerned one way or another. Possibly either because Ali was bluffing or the big guy wouldn't really hurt them. But the rest of them was a different matter entirely and Daryl and Rick for one were in no hurry to test the giants temper anytime soon.


	16. Chapter 16

"We go on foot from here." Ali said to them as she slid out of the driver's seat of the van and quietly closed the door behind her as the others quietly climbed out of the vehicle to join her. Rick, Glen and Daryl looked around the woods surrounding them warily. Almost as if they expected a herd of walkers to come out of nowhere and rend them all limb from limb.

However upon realizing that they weren't going to do so _immediately,_ they slowly relaxed and began to follow after the others as Ali and Jared and Sin slowly started to disappear among the tree line.

They followed the three at a discreet distance, making sure to keep them well within sight so that they wouldn't get separated from them in an unfamiliar area while making sure that their backs were watched just in case they ran into any trouble of the undead variety.

They walked for about five in a half miles before finally coming to a small clearing that tapered off in the direction of a driveway well hidden by a grove of overgrown trees and bushes and followed Ali out of the woods and into the driveway where she then turned north and started walking at a sedate pace until they could see a large three story, colonial style house on a massive spread of land that must have been over fifty acers.

Like the other homestead, this one had several gardens, some with flowers and herbs, fruit, an apple, orange, pear and peach grove- vegetables such as potato's, corn, peas, green beans, pinto beans, tomato's, sweet potato's ect… There was a large lake of near crystalline water absolutely _full_ of fish that they could see some people in several different boats and on the shore. Fishing and collecting some.

Carp, white fish, salmon, trout, bass, tilapia ect. And yet another body of water full of possibly catfish, mussels, clams and other tasty things that Rick, Glen and Daryl would just _love_ to get their hands on and take back with them to share with the rest of their group for dinner sometime.

There were several big pins full of rabbits, deer, cows, wild turkey, pheasant, chickens and off in the distance from those were several smaller homes. At least ten in all that they could see.

And all were big enough to house at least _three_ families of four or more people. So to say that Rick and glen and Daryl were impressed by the place, would be an understatement.

Finally upon reaching a certain point Ali called out, "Hello at the house!" Promptly followed by several tall men with red hair exiting the house and someone called out.

" _Aladdin_ ," A tall man with long reddish-pink colored hair a shade or two lighter than Ren's called out with a small slightly worried looking grin on his face as he waved. "How are you my young friend?"

Ali and the others seemed to notice the way that the man seemed concerned by their presence and subtly exchanged a glance with each other and inched closer to the girl. Rick and Daryl picked up on the subtle actions and began scanning the area around them as someone slipped Glen a semi automatic hand gun while he pretended to look around like a tourist.

Ali closed her eyes for a moment and used some of her magoi to sense any immediate threats and found a dozen or so men, all armed to the teeth, with hostages. Mostly women and children.

Which explained why there hadn't been many women and no children whatsoever running about playing like they usually did. "I'm well enough Muu-" She replied as she noted that Lo'lo, Muu's sister was strangely absent. And if she was possibly one of the hostages then Ali would have no choice but to fight as a magi instead of a human. Ren and Sin and Jareth would also have to fight with their own supernatural abilities- if they couldn't avoid it. "How are you, Lo'lo and the others?"

Muu was silent for a moment as a brief flicker of pain made it's way to his expression as one of the others stepped forward and said, "Aladdin….Lo'lo has passed on. It was just three days ago. Some strange men came through and grabbed her hoping that they could use her to get to the homestead. They made sport of her and then fed her to those undead things _alive_...We went to find her and get her back, but got there in time to see her get ripped apart. She died screaming." The man said in a pained tone.

Ali's expression darkened like a thunder cloud and she finally asked, "Did they get the information that they wanted? Is that why barely any of your women are present? And the children? Where are they?"

Muu hung his head and looked away. He didn't have to voice what was already known.

Aladdin wasn't a magi for just _any_ reason, after all.

She more than likely already knew what Muu had no wish to voice. His beautiful and spirited sister little sister...the one that he had spent more than half of his life protecting, training to be a fighter and a noble, hadn't died until she had been thoroughly broken and the information received.

Aladdin stared at the proud warrior that she had known for years now and felt her heart ache for his loss. She had spent a little time with Lo'lo here and there and knew that while the girl was a warrior herself, and could be quite savage at times like her older brother, she had been a sweet girl.

In her own roundabout way.

And as such...she should be _avenged_.

Which was why Ali pulled a short curved blade embedded with diamonds, and sapphires and rubies and simply said, "Then we'll just have to save you, won't we," As she conjured a borg to surround Sin, Ren, Glen, Rick, Daryl, Muu and the others before letting her magoi rise again, this time like the tides of a tsunami and called upon the power of nature as her form started to glow white with pale blue as she stepped away from the others and paused for a moment to look over her shoulder at them and say softly, "Prepare yourselves."


End file.
